Book Review
Museum of Distance
This debut collection has drawn widespread praise as an “Ovidian adventure” that blurs the “boundaries between the quotidian and the fantastic,” and for its use of thousands of images that “play a kind of dream-tag, each one...
Book Review
flicker
Lisa Bickmore teaches creative writing and composition to fortunate students at Salt Lake Community College. Her poetry has appeared in numerous respected journals over the years, and she was recently awarded ten thousand euros for...
Book Review
Literature for Nonhumans
This wildly imaginative cultural takedown of Illinois history delivers an extraordinary lesson in humanism, animal stewardship, and inner rage. Very, very few poets have Gabriel Gudding’s intellectual chops, and his wordplay...
Book Review
Memories of the Cultural Revolution
A billionaire capitalist shadowed by his Red Guard activism during China’s Cultural Revolution, Luo Ying is committed to facing down his own, and his country’s, Maoist demons through the excruciating vise of poetry. This collection,...
Book Review
Requiem for Used Ignition Cap
J. Scott Brownlee is a founding member of The Localists, a literary collective based on place-based writing and cultural grounding, so it follows that he dedicated this debut collection to rural Llano, Texas, his home. He earned his MFA...
Book Review
Swallows and Waves
Lithe and exacting, this collection draws inspiration from old Japanese woodblock prints and scroll paintings, resulting in lines at once visual and isolating. With two previous books and numerous awards and fellowships for earlier work,...
Book Review
Canada
Canada’s great size, rugged physical landscape, and understated personality of its smallish population all serve to keep the outrageous beauty of the place a relative secret—compared to its boastful southern neighbor. Crack the...
Book Review
Cuba
For many Americans, the haunting mystique of that forbidden communist island just ninety miles off our southern shore provokes both patriotic zeal and the bully’s shame. Yes, it’s complicated. Yet the 250 spectacular photos in this...