by Dallas Woodburn, Fiction Editor Antonya Nelson opens her collection of short stories Female Trouble with a quote by Oscar Wilde: “Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.” This perfectly captures the women who populate Nelson’s fiction—complex women with a wide variety of thoughts, problems, desires and fears. Her characters … Continue reading Messy, intricate lives: Antonya Nelson’s latest novel BOUND
Category: Review
‘There is no universal poetry, anyway, only poetries and poetics, and the streaming intertwining histories to which they belong. ‘: Adrienne Rich, 1929-2012
Jessica Jacobs, Editor-in-Chief “She died a famous woman denying her wounds denying her wounds came from the same source as her power.” These are the final lines from Adrienne Rich’s “Power,” a poem at once about the life and death of Marie Curie and the need to both name and embrace the wounds inflicted upon … Continue reading ‘There is no universal poetry, anyway, only poetries and poetics, and the streaming intertwining histories to which they belong. ‘: Adrienne Rich, 1929-2012
“the unattainable…rising on the tips of forks:” Mary Ruefle’s Selected Poems
By Matthew Kilbane Mary Ruefle writes delectable poems. In celebration of her Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2010), grab a clean plate and stroll this buffet of poetic nourishment. Because you may not know it yet, but you’re most certainly hungry. Item #1: Rhetoric Ruefle has a rhetorical streak. Her speakers love the utterance, and her … Continue reading “the unattainable…rising on the tips of forks:” Mary Ruefle’s Selected Poems
Alice Notley’s Ghouls: Reclaiming Myth
by David Blomenberg, Sycamore Review Contributor My strange reading coincidences continue. Wayne Miller’s wonderful poetry collection The City, Our City (a review of which appears in our most recent print issue) was part of an uncanny string of books I was reading that had to do with the formation and destruction of cities. The very next … Continue reading Alice Notley’s Ghouls: Reclaiming Myth
At Home in America: A Review of Shannon Cain’s THE NECESSITY OF CERTAIN BEHAVIORS
by Conor Broughan, Fiction Editor Thursday, December 1st, Shannon Cain will be taking part in the Purdue Visiting Writers Series on the Purdue campus in West Lafayette, Indiana. Please join us at the Krannert Auditorium, Room 140 at 7:30. Shannon Cain will be reading from her debut collection The Necessity of Certain Behaviors. The event … Continue reading At Home in America: A Review of Shannon Cain’s THE NECESSITY OF CERTAIN BEHAVIORS
Grotesque and Lovely: A review of Bonnie Nadzam’s LAMB
by Conor Broughan When your kitchen is a mess—a plates-piled-high-in-the-sink, socks-getting-stuck-on-sticky-spots mess—how do you react? If you’re anything like me, a messy kitchen means that you clean up the coffee table in the living room or pick up clothes that have collected at the foot the bed. Rather than tackling dirty dishes, the grime on … Continue reading Grotesque and Lovely: A review of Bonnie Nadzam’s LAMB
Doing What They Feel They Must: A Review of Patricia Henley’s OTHER HEARTBREAKS
by Rob Davidson Every good story collection has its governing metaphors, those common notes that blend the individual crooners into a concert of voices singing harmony. Restlessness defines the spirited characters in Patricia Henley’s fine new collection of short fiction, Other Heartbreaks. In these stories, people’s lives break down and are reassembled; there are changes … Continue reading Doing What They Feel They Must: A Review of Patricia Henley’s OTHER HEARTBREAKS
How to Explode the Everyday and Save It: A Review of Lily Brown’s RUST OR GO MISSING
by A.E. Watkins In a country and age without epics, we have only lyrics, each a minor hero that braves a domesticated and commodified world. Lily Brown’s first book, Rust or Go Missing, affirms the dangers of such a world, navigating the real hazards that hide in our postmodern (mis)understanding of the spaces we live … Continue reading How to Explode the Everyday and Save It: A Review of Lily Brown’s RUST OR GO MISSING
Dwaine Rieves’ When The Eye Forms
BY LAURA DONNELLY, Poetry Editor Carolyn Forché, who selected Dwaine Rieves’ book of poems for the 2005 Tupelo Press Award, writes “who is more qualified than a poet-physician to tell us, following Ovid’s words, of how bodies change into different bodies? Dwaine Rieves’ When The Eye Forms offers us that rarity, a poet-doctor’s book of … Continue reading Dwaine Rieves’ When The Eye Forms
