Reviews

Mon May 16 2011 Our South: Geographic Fantasy and the Rise of National Literature by Jessica Handler Our South: Geographic Fantasy and the Rise of National LiteratureBy Jennifer Rae Greeson Harvard Read more...	Mon Apr 4 2011 The H.D. Book by Robert Duncan by Bruce Whiteman The H.D. BookBy Robert DuncanUniversity of California Press In an 1885 letter to the poet Paul Read more...	Mon Mar 21 2011 Every Riven Thing by Christian Wiman by Mike Puican Every Riven ThingBy Christian WimanFarrar, Straus and Giroux Like many contemporary poets, Read more...
Mon Mar 7 2011 The Poetry Lesson by Andrei Codrescu by Tien (Mimi) Nguyen The Poetry LessonBy Andrei CodrescuPrinceton University Press Andrei Codrescu’s The Poetry Lesson Read more...	Fri Feb 25 2011 The Eternal City by Kathleen Graber by Lana Rakhman The Eternal CityBy Kathleen Graber Princeton University Press Kathleen Graber’s aptly titled second Read more...	Mon Feb 21 2011 Daddy's by Lindsay Hunter by Barry Silesky Daddy'sBy Lindsay HunterFeatherproof Books The twenty-four prose compositions here range from three Read more...
Mon Feb 14 2011 The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief by V. S. Naipaul by Ari Bookman The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African BeliefBy V. S. Naipaul Alfred A. Knopf For a nonbeliever Read more...	Mon Jan 3 2011 Black-Eyed Heifer by Shelly Taylor by Dane Hamann Black-Eyed HeiferBy Shelly TaylorTarpaulin Sky Press Shelly Taylor’s debut effort, Black-Eyed Read more...	Mon Dec 6 2010 Russia Against Napoleon by Dominic Lieven by Richard Wirick In Tolstoy’s theory of history there is no such thing as the Great Man or Leader, no historically 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