“The function of the wrestler is not to win: it is to go exactly through the motions which are expected of him.” —Roland Barthes, “The World of Wrestling,” Mythologies Let’s…
Category: Reviews
Let’s pretend: you review me, I review you. We read each other’s poems (barely) and whisper sweet nothings, banal praise. We attend ‘events’ to ‘see’ others and ‘be seen.’ This…
Joseph Boyden’s newest novel The Orenda (Penguin, 2013) was published to what seemed universal acclaim. Kamal Al-Soylaylee writing in Quill & Quire’s October issue described it as a “magnificent literary beast”;…
Opening with “Words torn, unseen, unseemly, scene,” one is immediately told how to read, what to do with Ron Silliman’s Revelator (BookThug, 2013).[1] Comprehension is not mandatory; cohesion is still…
Far, far outside of MFA circles there is a poet whose poetic practice has breached the confines of the blank page to be etched on every available surface. The Far…
Burial, Claire Donato. Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2013. Hospitalogy, David Wolach. Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2013. by Jake Kennedy Out of Lispector (possibilities/impossibilities of form)… out of Woolf (some kind of ruthless…
IKMQ, Roger Farr. New Star Books, 2012 By Nora Fulton I may be repeating myself here, but everybody loves Ludwig Wittgenstein. Between Johanna Drucker and Jan Zwicky (and that’s quite the…
Sal Capone: The Lamentable Tragedy of, a play by Omari Newton. MAI Centre, Montreal, 2013. By Max Bledstein The history of racial relations in North America has certainly been a topic…
Multitudes, Margaret Christakos. Coach House Books, 2013. By Bronwyn Haslam let’s push words into coming. gnash words into coming, into body. shove grammar onto parts. load coming into each. is…
Damnation, Janice Lee. Penny-Ante Editions, 2013 by Nicholas Grider In scientist Nicholas Humphrey’s recent book Seeing Red he describes two forms of “the present,” both of which Janice Lee’s Damnation…
Love Dog, Masha Tupitsyn. Penny-Ante Editions, 2013. by Heather Cromarty In the past year I’ve read several female-penned books that began life online. Female personal writing takes place more and…
Zeppelin, Blaise Morritz. Nightwood Editions, 2013. By Alexander St Laurent Blaise Morritz’s second collection, Zeppelin, is an intelligent and clever musing on the modern condition, or rather, the millennial condition.…