Yearly Archives: 2019
Checking Into Hotel Swampland: A Review
“Time and again Felice shows us that darkness does not have to overshadow our lives and dark humor coupled with a bit of hope might just sustain us.”
Like Water
by B.J. Hollars Fifteen minutes into our first lesson at The Kung Pow School for Martial Arts, my daughter Joan and I struggle through the proper pronunciation of the word “karate.” “Ka-ra-te,” Sensei Doug demonstrates. “Carrot-y,” I parrot back. “No, … Read more
Walking the Dark Path: A Review of Chelsea Rathburn’s Still Life with Mother and Knife
by JESSICA Q. STARK Chelsea Rathburn, Still Life with Mother and Knife (LSU Press, 2019), pp. 80 I read Chelsea Rathburn’s Still Life with Mother and Knife in the wake of my own new motherhood. My son, an 18-month-old bundle … Read more
The White Room
by ROBERT GADKEY Otis Covington uncrossed his legs and swiveled in the brown leather chair, sliding his worn athletic socks underneath the gray tanker desk. He wore a standard uniform: faded blue jeans that tapered in at the ankle and … Read more
Inhabited Symbols: A Review of The English Boat by Donald Revell
by JESSICA DREXEL Donald Revell, The English Boat (Alice James, 2018), pp. 100 “…Straight path along the dusky path homewards Ordinariness spent no otherwise Labor and bafflement without ending Green corduroy copper hair then eyes Wild with tangling underwood pleasure … Read more
Why They Can’t Write and The Writer’s Practice: A Review of John Warner’s Recent Works
by RACHEL GEVLIN John Warner, Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities (Johns Hopkins University Press, November 2018), pp. 288 —, The Writer’s Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing (Penguin, February 2019), pp. … Read more
Chekhov: Stories for Our Time: A Review
by TARAS V. MIKHAILIUK Anton Chekhov, Chekhov: Stories for Our Time. Translated from the Russian by Constance Garnett, Ilan Stavans, and Alexander Gurvets (Restless Books, 2018), pp. 344. To review an edition of Anton Chekhov’s stories is an honor I … Read more
Half-Blind Dog
by AMY HENRY There isn’t much to say, I tell folks when they ask about the events of last June. How it was that Eva Lewis, my caretaker at the Sheridan House Adult Care Center, and Jordan Reed, her boyfriend … Read more
The Fox and Dr. Shimamura: A Review
by CAOIMHE A. HARLOCK Christine Wunnicke, The Fox and Dr. Shimamura (New Directions, 2019), pp. 160 Christine Wunnicke’s The Fox and Dr. Shimamura (2019, New Directions) is a novel that blends science and the supernatural, East and West, past and future. It … Read more