Posted 1 May 2012
The Edge of Maybe
Fiction by Ericka Lutz
Last Light Studio Books, March 2012
ISBN-13: 978-0-9827084-4-6
Paperback: 326pp; $15.95
Review by Jodi Paloni
Here’s an idea for a story. Take a beautiful life: happy
marriage, comfortable home, and a smart and talented daughter,
the three of you eating in a different restaurant every night.
Ignore the husband’s loner party binges in the basement. Push
aside the wife’s curiosity of her yoga teacher’s guiding hands
on her hips. Everyone’s entitled to a little secret, except
daughters. Don’t even suspect that daughters, locked in their
rooms, are not doing homework. Now throw in a surprise visitor
from the past and witness the beautiful life unravel. Next
explore the aftermath…
[Read
full review here]
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The
Poetry of Thought
From Hellenism to Celan
Nonfiction by George Steiner
New Directions Books, November 2011
ISBN-13: 978-0-8112-1945-7
Hardcover: 192pp; $24.95
Review by Patrick James Dunagan
Polymath George Steiner offers up an essay that will, in all
likelihood, either send readers into the library stacks with a
long list of sources for further reading or drive them away from
finishing his text. There are instances here where on a single
page, no less than ten names from a diverse range of languages
and eras throughout Western thought are bandied about as if
Steiner were relaying a conversation with a young child or a
walk he takes to the park every day. It’s most likely to be
found either hopelessly intimidating or a joke, depending on the
temperament of the reader…
[Read full review here]
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The Severed Head
Capital Visions
Nonfiction by Julia Kristeva
Translated from the French by Jody Gladding
Columbia University Press, December 2011
ISBN-13: 978-0-231-15720-9
Hardcover: 176pp; $34.50
Review by Patricia Contino
I never forgot that photo. It was in a history of the Metropolitan Opera, and soprano Olive Fremstad was Salome holding the platter with John the Baptist’s head. Even by 1907 standards, her beaded costume and big hair were beyond camp, but to my teenaged self the waxy, dead head looked real enough. I was sufficiently creeped out to avoid Richard Strauss’ opera until adulthood, when I discovered Salome’s
true horrors: placing unrealistic demands on its lead to perform
a striptease to music that’s impossible to dance—let alone time
the tearing off of seven veils—to, before singing a punishingly
long monologue…
[Read full review here]
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She’d Waited Millennia
Poetry by Lizzie Hutton
New Issues Poetry & Prose, October 2011
ISBN-13: 978-1-936970-02-5
Paperback: 74pp; $15.00
Review by Alyse Bensel
She’d Waited Millennia, Lizzie Hutton’s debut poetry collection of lyrical free verse, finds its emotional core by navigating through the rises and falls of motherhood. Poems ranging in stanzaic
and linear form encompass the breadth of intimacies in
relationships: from mother to child, lover to lover, and friend
to friend. Each inextricably linked poem gathers strength
through an accumulation of immediacy with images that build upon
one another; the speaker’s examination of the world reveals a
close and complicated relationship with description’s power…
[Read full review here]
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Vladimir’s Mustache and Other Stories
Fiction by Stephan Eirik Clark
Russian Life Books, February 2012
ISBN-13: 978-1880100714
Paperback: 168pp; $16.00
Review by Lydia Pyne
In 1953, Isaac Berlin composed what is perhaps his best known essay, “The Fox and The Hedgehog,” in which he outlines two specific types of literary genius. He describes Russian writers like Fyodor Dostoyesky who focus narrowly on a character—exploring the every nuance and complex mystique of an individual within his broader context. Authors like Alexander Pushkin, on the other hand, utilize a broad long duree
approach to narrative, giving the reader such a sweeping
perspective that the individual is simply one part among many of
the fabric or context…
[Read full review here]
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Heavy Petting
Poetry by Gregory Sherl
YesYes Books, September 2011
ISBN-13: 978-1936919000
Paperback: 128pp; $16.00
Review by Katy Haas
In Gregory Sherl’s book Heavy Petting, he presents a sometimes funny, sometimes touching collection of brilliant poems. The book is broken into four sections, each with different themes and different styles. Despite these small differences, the sections share the common thread of Sherl’s
distinct voice which is as poetic as it is easy to read. Along
with his voice, other commonalities sprinkled throughout various
pieces become apparent: Crystal Light, Tylenol PM, leaving
conditioner in for the full two minutes…
[Read full review here]
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Beauty is a Verb
The New Poetry of Disability
Edited by Jennifer Bartlett, Sheila Black, Michael Northen
Cinco Puntos, October 2011
ISBN-13: 978-1935955054
Paperback: 326pp; $19.95
Review by Aimee Nicole
As the subtitle notes, Beauty is a Verb has been
marked as the new poetry of disability. After a “Short History
of American Disability Poetry,” this hefty anthology is broken
off into sections, for example: “The Disability Poetics
Movement,” “Lyricism of the Body,” and “Towards a New Language
of Embodiment.” Rather than just including the actual poetry,
authors preface their work with short autobiographies. They
touch upon their disabilities as well as how they affect both
their lives and their art. This allows the reader to have a more
personal interaction with the poetry, as there is a foundation
for the words…
[Read
full review here]
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Living Arrangements
Fiction by Laura Maylene Walter
BkMk Press, December 2011
ISBN-13: 978-1886157804
Paperback: 175pp; $15.95
Review by Mantra Roy
Winner of the prestigious G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction, Living Arrangements, a collection of short stories by Laura Maylene Walter, offers the reader thirteen well-crafted stories, crisp in their language, tight in their structure, and thought-provoking in their effect. Most of the stories deal with loss, memory, family relations, and a variety of “living arrangements.”
In the first story, “Living Arrangements,” the reader visits all
the physical buildings and inner spaces a woman inhabits from
the first few months of her birth…
[Read full review here]
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Cultivating a Movement
An Oral History of Organic Farming & Sustainable Agriculture on California’s Central Coast
Edited by Sarah Rabkin, Irene Reti, and Ellen Farmer
University of California Santa Cruz Library, September 2011
ISBN-13: 978-0-972334365
Paperback: 340pp; $19.95
Review by Alyse Bensel
Gathering from the oral tradition of organic and sustainable farmers along the coast of the Central California region, Cultivating a Movement
compiles selected interviews from key farmers that began and
continue to pursue the sustainable agriculture movement in the
United States and Mexico. While this project highlights only 27
individuals and couples, the vast online archive contains many
more interviews with key farmers, politicians, academics,
scientists, and many more ecologically minded individuals that
contribute to this movement. Ranging in age, gender, class, and
ethnicity, all of these farmers are involved…
[Read full review here]
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Checking In / Checking Out
Nonfiction by Christopher Schaberg and Mark Yakich
NO Books, October 2011
ISBN-13: 978-0-615-46640-8
Paperback: 112pp; $9.95
Review by Cheryl Wright-Watkins
In this book, the two writers explore various elements and facets of modern air travel. The design of the pocket-sized volume is unusual: it is reversible, each half reflecting the unique perspective of its author. Both men are professors in the English Department at Loyola University in New Orleans where they met. Checking In contains the observations and experiences of Schaberg, who once worked as a cross-utilized agent for SkyWest Airlines at the Gallatin Field Airport near Bozeman, Montana while he was attending graduate school. In Checking Out, Yakich explores his lifelong fear of flying. Schaberg and Yakich
recently launched a website…
[Read full review here]
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Wild
From Lost To Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Nonfiction by Cheryl Strayed
Knopf, March 2012
ISBN-13: 978-0-307-59273-6
Hardcover: 336pp; $25.95
Review by David Breithaupt
In the mid-1990s, Cheryl Strayed hit a wall. Her mother died
of cancer at age 45, only 49 days after diagnosis. Soon after,
her marriage unraveled, and she took up with a man of dubious
qualities who introduced her to heroin. She liked it, smoking
the black tar and occasionally sniffing the powder. It was
certainly easier than coping with the out-of-nowhere shock of
her mother’s death, coupled with the dissolution of her union
with a man she once loved and perhaps still did. She was beating
a steady retreat into oblivion…
[Read full review here]
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The Grey Album
On the Blackness of Blackness
Nonfiction by Kevin Young
Graywolf Press, March 2012
ISBN-13: 978-1555976071
Paperback: 492pp; $25.00
Review by Ann Beman
Kevin Young is smarter than I am, and a galactically better poet. Reading Young’s The Grey Album makes me feel dumb and confused, and part of that is due to his poetic leaps in tone from academic to vernacular. It’s also due to the fact that I’m ignorant. I am whiter than blank, and ignorant of more than half of Young’s references. But reading The Grey Album
also makes me feel like reaching, like the exchange student who
doesn’t yet speak or read the language, but her eyes and ears
are burning to. With time, she’ll understand. With time, she’ll
connect, become a part of the conversation…
[Read full review here]