Indigo: A Review
by ELLIE RAMBO Padgett Powell, Indigo (Catapult, 2021), pp. 223. If I were to start the review of this book the way many of the essays within it begin, I would open with a personal story, which by the third …
by CELIA LEGBAND HAWLEY Sevastopol, Emilio Fraia, New Directions Publishing, 2021. Possibly the best advice I can give you about reading Emilio Fraia’s 2018 novel Sevastopol is: Do not let your first reading be your only one. The South American …
by BEE GRAY-ARMY Bewilderness, Karen Tucker, 2021, 288 p. In our current moment, addiction is as familiar to most Americans as a regularly scheduled television program. In fact, 22 million people are currently suffering from active substance use disorders …
by MARY SIMS Rachel Mennies, The Naomi Letters (BOA Editions, 2021). Rachel Mennies’ The Naomi Letters opens with a question, an invitation to devotion: “The love poets say suffering is relative, but would they pull a plane whole / from …
by DONAL MACADAM Gina Nutt, Night Rooms (Two Dollar Radio, 2021). Gina Nutt writes that horror in film is “a reaction, recognition, a response to a call.” Nutt is the author of the poetry collection Wilderness Champion and two chapbooks— “Here …
by SHANA SCUDDER Jesse McCarthy, The Fugitivities (Melville House, 2021). Jesse McCarthy’s debut novel The Fugitivities asks the weighty and perhaps unanswerable question: what does it mean to be Black? Is it a static form of identity which one carries across …
by DEREK WITTEN Jesse DeLong, The Amateur Scientist’s Notebook (Baobab Press, 2021). Anyone who has vaguely intuited an unknown poetic language behind terms like electroweak, phosphorous, chlorofluorocarbons—or even behind the law of gravity– will find a skillful interpreter in Jesse DeLong. …
by MINDY BUCHANAN-KING Nikki Wallschlaeger, Waterbaby (Copper Canyon Press, 2021). Reading Nikki Wallschlaeger’s third collection of writing is an immersive experience. The title, Waterbaby, elicits a sense of submersion, and the theme of water winds and slips between the …
by MATTHEW POTTS Devin Jacobsen, Breath Like the Wind at Dawn (Sagging Meniscus Press, 2020), pp. 208. Scary stories are probably about as ancient to human culture as campfires, but there’s a special sort of monster that lurks in the …
Syncopated Sensibility: Review of Sevastopol
Bewilderness: A Review
The Naomi Letters: A Review
Night Rooms: A Review
The Fugitivities: A Review
Jesse DeLong’s Poetic Chemical Reaction: A Review of The Amateur Scientist’s Notebook
Waterbaby: A Review
Breath Like the Wind at Dawn: A Review