John Biscello’s astonishing work, The Last Furies, is a vaudeville routine wrapped around a radio drama, tucked into a theater piece, bound by a screenplay, drawn into a rich and sprawling novel. Imagine a character in a play. What if they had an inner life outside of the script and the production itself?
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Redemption Songs: A review of The Wreck of Your Life on the Evening News by Roy Bentley
When he says “Movies are what we have in the United States of America / to save of from some poverty of Spirit,” (99) he speaks for humankind. That he does so in words that are passionate, elegant, and honest is his readers’ good fortune. Roy Bentley is one of the best poets writing in English, and The Wreck of Your Life on the Evening News is his best book to date.
A review of The Tao According to Calvin Coolidge by Charles Rammelkamp
Here, as elsewhere in this fine collection, Rammelkamp’s poetical plain style doesn’t attempt to call attention to its cleverness, but mirrors Coolidge’s own reserved eloquence. Or as Abraham Lincoln once ironically opined: if you keep your mouth shut, people will think you’re a fool. If you open it, they’ll know for sure.
The retrofitted grotesque: A review of Vivienne by Emmalea Russo
Russo’s Vivienne is an off-putting montage that attempts to answer what art has to atone for, or whether it has anything left to offer at all. Women who are childish, nearly opaque, and naturally mildly misandrist are a rare and treasured sighting that I am delighted to have been granted.
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A review of trying x trying by Dora Malech
The paronomasia here and all over trying x trying is astounding, and the cryptic title – trying x trying – likewise highlights Malech’s elusive cleverness, her coy, seductive use of words, her dexterity with language. Dora Malech’s verse makes you think of an acrobat who makes it look so easy, flying through the air, swinging on the trapeze, gracefully contorting, spinning, landing in a seemingly single effort.
A review of The Current Fantasy by Charlie Haas
That Haas is a successful screenwriter (Gremlins 2), comes through in the novel’s vivid and cinematic details. Every step of the way you participate in the sights, sounds, smells and real challenges of building a commune. At one desperate point, Benji bicycles from San Bernardino to Los Angeles, a remarkably believable trip.
A review of Eject City by Jason Morphew
Morphew’s background as both a poet and songwriter resonates throughout the collection. Some poems carry a musical cadence; others resist rhythm altogether. Morphew is unafraid to let his poems falter, stutter, or collapse into silence. He is a true artist—a virtuoso who is unafraid to take risks. He transforms his despair and life’s experiences into art—whether of body, of heart, or of legacy.
A review of Ischia by Gisela Heffes
The story quickly transitions though as we’re carried by a bird and further out and down the rabbit hole via layered patterns of dissociative travel. Ischia encounters a dizzying array of wild circumstances which challenged my conception of the bounds of traditional storytelling.
A review of Suicide by Édouard Levé
The narration in particular demonstrates Levé’s artistry. The book’s speaker addresses his friend, recounting a wide range of events, conversations, and thoughts that took place before the suicide. But wait—he, the narrator, is recounting incredibly specific details about his friend’s life, quoting conversations, explaining worries and trains of thought that his friend, not the narrator, experienced.