Reviews

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...	Mon Feb 25 2013 Hold It ’Til It Hurts by T. Geronimo Johnson by Ignatius Aloysius Hold It 'Til It Hurtsby T. Geronimo Johnson Coffee House Press With a name drawn from the Read more...	Mon Feb 18 2013 The Round Barn: A Biography of an American Farm by Jacqueline Dougan Jackson by Joe Kolina The Round Barn: A Biography of an American Farmby Jacqueline Dougan JacksonBeloit College Press Read more...
Mon Feb 11 2013 Diary by Witold Gombrowicz by Ela Bittencourt Diaryby Witold GombrowiczTranslated by Lillian ValleeYale University Press Modernist writer Witold Read more...	Mon Feb 4 2013 Black and Blue: The Origins and Consequences of Medical Racism by John Hoberman by Matt Wood Black and Blue: The Origins and Consequences of Medical Racismby John HobermanUniversity of Read more...	Mon Jan 28 2013 American Sunshine: Diseases of Darkness and the Quest for Natural Light by Daniel Freund by Catherine Cocks American Sunshine: Diseases of Darkness and the Quest for Natural Lightby Daniel FreundThe Read more...
Fri Jan 25 2013 Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature by Daniel Levin Becker by Leigh Arber Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literatureby Daniel Levin Becker Harvard University Read more...	Thu Jan 24 2013 New Directions in Digital Poetry by C.T. Funkhouser by Eric Goddard-Scovel New Directions in Digital Poetryby C.T. FunkhouserContinuum Academic Publishing I came to C. T. Read more...	Wed Jan 23 2013 Doing Time in the Depression: Everyday Life in Texas and California Prisons by Ethan Blue by Anne-Marie Cusac Doing Time in the Depression: Everyday Life in Texas and California Prisonsby Ethan BlueNew York 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

Thomas Nast: The Father of Modern Political Cartoons by Fiona Deans Halloran

In Thomas Nast: The Father of Modern Political Cartoons, Fiona Deans Halloran provides a superb overview of Nast's life, from his family's origin in Germany's Palatinate to his youth in 1850s Lower Manhattan among a dynamic mix of Irish, German, Italian, Jewish, Catholic and Protestant cultures.
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.

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