Reviews

Tue May 21 2013 City of the Big Shoulders: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry, edited by Ryan G. Van Cleave by Steve Fellner City of the Big ShouldersEdited by Ryan G. Van Cleave University of Iowa Press I grew up in Read more...	Thu May 16 2013 The Game of Boxes by Catherine Barnett by Christopher Kempf The Game of Boxesby Catherine Barnett Graywolf Press “Can we make a game of it,” asks Read more...	Mon May 13 2013 Whatever is Contained Must be Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life as a Feminist Artist, by Heléne Aylon by Aviya Kushner Whatever Is Contained Must Be Releasedby Helene Aylon Feminist Press at City University of New Read more...
Mon May 6 2013 The Walls Behind the Curtain: East European Prison Literature, 1945-1990 edited by Harold B. Segel by Peter Freund The Walls Behind the CurtainEdited by Harold B. Segel University of Pittsburgh Press The Read more...	Mon Apr 29 2013 Love: An Index by Rebecca Lindenberg by Kimberly Grey Love: An Indexby Rebecca LindenbergMcSweeney's In 2009 the poet Craig Arnold disappeared on the Read more...	Mon Apr 8 2013 Ramblers: Loyola Chicago 1963—The Team that Changed the Color of College Basketball by Michael Lenehan by Linc Cohen Ramblers: Loyola Chicago 1963-The Team that Changed the Color of College Basketball by Michael Read more...
Mon Mar 25 2013 Why Detroit? by Susan Messer The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Fordby Beth Tompkins Bates University of North Read more...	Mon Mar 18 2013 Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss by Philip Nel by Jessica Handler Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Read more...	Thu Mar 7 2013 The Selected Letters of Anthony Hecht edited by Jonathan F.S. Post by Mike Puican The Selected Letters of Anthony HechtEdited by Jonathan F.S. Post Johns Hopkins University Press Read more...

Views

The Moving Face (for Roger Ebert)

The first time I ever really thought about Roger Ebert it was because I knew he was warm, dry, and celebrating and I was cold, wet and furious. It was January 2005 in Chicago, and unsurprisingly it was snowing on me and members of Not Dead Yet as we staged a protest outside the Union League Club, surrounded by a row of news trucks.
On the Early English Essay: An Experimental Array

"Essay" enters into English untamed.
The Facts of the Matter

Here is how it happened: The door to the suite was open that night when I walked past and saw her splayed across a couch, one foot on the floor, one leg hooked over an arm rest.
Excerpt from Office Girl

On that Monday at the end of January, Jack Blevins, a questionable young man of twenty-five, rides his blue bicycle beneath the flurry, with tape recorder in hand.

Interviews

Douglas Foster: Interview

"We’re quite rightfully concerned by the level of unemployment in the United States and the ways people were devastated by the financial crisis of 2008, but in the circumstances people face in a place like South Africa, 10 percent unemployment would be heaven."
Stephen Elliott: Interview

“We all change; the things you want from writing, at a certain age, become different from the things you want later. I’ve avoided any obligations, and I still live like a child. I don’t have a wife and kids. I’m on my own. It’s a choice.”
B.J. Hollars: Interview

"Blurring the Boundaries was inspired by my own frustration with facts."
Karen Rigby: Interview

My poetry won’t suit everyone. It has been described as dense; I’m aware of that response, so I wouldn’t say “I hope everyone reads it.”

Reviews

City of the Big Shoulders: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry, edited by Ryan G. Van Cleave

Ryan G. Van Cleave’s new anthology of Chicago poetry, City of the Big Shoulders, succeeds in displaying the essentials as defined and described by a diverse crowd of Chicagoans.
The Game of Boxes by Catherine Barnett

At the heart of this collection, Barnett’s second, is an engagement with Kant’s idea of the sublime, namely that the self experiences both terror and dread in the face of the infinite—whether death or, as the Romantics understood it, the implacable force of Nature.
Whatever is Contained Must be Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life as a Feminist Artist, by Heléne Aylon

The memoir, like the artist herself, swerves between cutting-edge installation art, the ancient passages of the Bible, and centuries-old Jewish law and tradition.
The Walls Behind the Curtain: East European Prison Literature, 1945-1990 edited by Harold B. Segel

This fascinating book, edited by Prof. Harold B. Segel of Columbia University, presents a rich sampling of writings by people imprisoned in the jails of the former Eastern European Soviet colonies...

Blog Posts

How Poems Move #12

Apr 25, 2013
How Poems Move #11

Apr 23, 2013
How Poems Move #10

Apr 18, 2013
How Poems Move #9

Apr 17, 2013