Commentary |
on The Burning World, poems by Sherod Santos
“In the context of his eschatological vision of the world’s critical mass of political and environmental crises, his stark imagery sounds dire alarms with apocalyptic evidence.”
Commentary |
on Exhibitions: Essays on art and Atrocity by Jehanne Dubrow
“She writes: ‘Here is one of the problems with the beautiful. It exists, even adjacent to horror.” And not just adjacent to horror, but within it.'”
Commentary |
on My Work, a novel by Olga Ravn, translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi & Jennifer Russell
“… a triumph that teaches us to see mothers — bodies, viserca, child, lover, work and all. The novel places the overdetermined, overperformed self and holds it in place for us to watch the woman contingently lay claim to herself.”
Commentary |
Book Notes: on Time’s Mouth, a novel by Edan Lepucki & A Practical Guide to Levitation, stories by José Eduardo Agualusa, translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn
“… a magical realist California morality tale about motherhood, the search for safety, and generational strife with a light touch that avoids trauma-speak but doesn’t mitigate the negative effects of selfishness.”
Commentary |
on The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time by Yascha Mounk
“In his view, ‘wokeness’ has mutated, virus-like, from college campuses into mainstream media, infecting millions of professors and students, pundits and politicians, and birthing a cottage industry of DEI consultants.”
Commentary |
on The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, translated by Francis Steegmuller
“The collection will prove of especial value to the writer, who may take consolation from Flaubert’s self-doubts and progress always slower than he wishes, and inspiration from the transmutation of inconsequential scraps into literature.”
Commentary |
on Thin Skin, essays by Jenn Shapland
“The five essays emphasize the point that escape and separation from humanity are fraudulent concepts, no matter how far away you think you’ve gotten from it all. People — especially women — are forever enmeshed in a host of complications related to environment, capitalism, and power.”
Commentary |
on Surreal Spaces: The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington by Joanna Moorhead
“Carrington’s life was geographically, artistically and romantically effusive, spanning continents and wars, romantic and artistic entanglements, and a profusion of creative formats.”
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Book Notes: on Eggtooth, poems by Jesse Nathan & Grand Tour, poems by Elisa Gonzalez
“Her grand tour is never satisfied with a hop from what-I-was to what-I-am, even as those two psychic zones offer a n armature. It’s the moment of speaking that matters, and will not settle into the stasis of victimhood.”
Commentary |
on Please make me pretty, I don’t want to die, poetry by Tawanda Mulalu
‘Mulalu reminds us that song comes from the shared sorrow of breath — a sorrow that stems from an American past that bleeds into present and future …”
Commentary |
After the Nazis: The Story of Culture in West Germany by Michael H. Kater
“There’s no ‘After’ in After the Nazis but rather an excruciating push-pull between generations of musicians, writers, painters, and cineastes, wrangling over a genocide that a nation chose to forget.”
Commentary |
on Landscapes, a novel by Christine Lai
“… the recognition that just as we create art in response to our own trauma and pain, we must do so in response to broader losses, even those of our own creation …”
Commentary |
on Love and Industry and Voice First, essay collections by Sonya Huber
“She argues that a young writer at the beginning of her artist’s journey may overburden herself with the search for her ‘voice,’ when in fact there are many voices inside her …”
Commentary |
on All The Eyes That I Have Opened, poems by Franca Mancinelli, translated from the Italian by John Taylor
“… the severing wound, independent of cause, may function – as it does throughout the book – as a transpersonal source of insight, connectedness and compassion for those who open it, open to it.”
Commentary |
on I Do Everything I’m Told, poems by Megan Fernandes
“… a ‘new origin story’ of queer desire reminding the reader to look no further than their own body to celebrate these incanted states of longing, grief, wonder, and awe.”