A Conversation with Richard Martin

I’ve been fascinated by Martin’s work since we first met in the mid 1980s. His observations are probing without condescension, and his special brand of humor highlights the peculiarities of human nature as well as the mysteries of the world. He is prolific but never redundant. Given the particularly turbulent state of the world currently, I believe his work is extremely relevant, and readers can benefit greatly from his insights.

A review of Essence By Thuy On

The short poems throughout Essence work perfectly for the discrete subject matter and are easy to read, but the simplicity belies the depth of this work or the way it interrogates language and the impact it has. Readers will enjoy the many literary references and links throughout the book, and the way in which On collates external sources with a sensual framework. Essence is a pleasure to read, beautifully written, funny and often deeply moving.

Of Loyalty to Father & Country: A review of At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China Edward Wong

The reader is in the hands of a writer and scholar whose last twenty years have been dedicated, it would seem, to gathering and sorting material to offer the reader a powerful view into a highly complex culture and nation. Motivated, it would seem, by a profound interest of his own, Wong writes, as it has been noted elsewhere, almost as filial duty to a father whose loyalty to his country was betrayed by its leaders.

A review of Mycocosmic: Poems by Lesley Wheeler

Wheeler’s ideas synthesize unusual word groupings; from these combinations new qualities emerge, such as unpredictably jarring, sometimes funny internal and end rhymes, line breaks, and punctuation, not unlike the way speakers of a language are able to generate an infinite number of sentences from a finite set of syntactical rules.

A review of Bare Ana and Other Stories by Robert Shapard

A spectrum of characters populates the prismatic flash in Bare Ana. Every story sings a surprise or a change of perspective. A couple honeymoons in Wakiki, but the husband falls off a twelfth-floor balcony. A young girl in a leotard flips an impossible set in front of a judges’ panel. A weather forecaster flies off – not to another television station – but on a renegade weather balloon.