Negotiation With Life: Minus One by Doris Iarovici
Minus One by Doris Iarovici (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2020). Moments of regret permeate the stories in Doris Iarovici’s new book, Minus One, a collection of studies…
Context and Culture: Breathing Technique by Marija Knežević
Breathing Technique by Marija Knežević (Zephyr Press, 2021). In a selection of excerpts from “The River’s Name,” the standout poem of Breathing Technique (Zephyr Press, 2021), Serbian writer…
For the Living and the Dead: Funeral Diva by Pamela Sneed
Funeral Diva by Pamela Sneed (City Lights Books, 2020). In an interview on the Ezra Klein Show, the two-term American poet laureate Tracy K. Smith describes poetry as…
On Coming of Age: An Incomplete List of Names by Michael Torres
An Incomplete List of Names by Michael Torres (Beacon Press, 2020). Michael Torres’s powerful debut, An Incomplete List of Names, opens with an act of loyalty—the kind that…
Shots Fired
“The dead are having a party without us. They’ve left our worries behind . . .” —Kathleen Aguero, from “Send Off” Kerry was using again the last…
Freddy’s Vacation
I Excursion, corrects my father, who is a hunter. He is standing over a basin in our shack, pressing freshly butchered venison into salt, and the finger he…
The Anthropologist Problem
In the official texts that the villagers had permitted me to read, there was never a strict age requirement. What mattered was that the candidates were elders—re-tellers of stories,…
Shared Solitudes: The Mother House by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Still Life by Ciaran Carson
The Mother House by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (Wake Forest University Press, 2020). Still Life by Ciaran Carson (Wake Forest University Press, 2020). Since the Covid-19 pandemic has fundamentally…
Kontemporary Amerikan Love Song: Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry: Poems by John Murillo
Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry: Poems by John Murillo (Four-Way Books, 2020). Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry: Poems, John Murillo’s second collection, is constructed in the vein of a craft-book, and nearly…