Hamby’s ideas flow like a person talking to herself, and we get to listen in. Her free-association stream-of-consciousness is exactly the stuff of dreams, as alluded to earlier, so it’s no surprise that so many of the odes involve dreams. “Ode on the Rilke Metro Stop in the Paris of My Dreams” is one (“In this dream we’re in Paris, driving around in a car, / which is a nightmare…”).
Author:
A review of The Voice of Blood by Gabriela Rábago Palafox
The Voice of Blood is an eye opener. (A vein opener, too.) Read this book and you will fly with Quetzalcoatl, in a Cinco de Mayo replete with myth, fable, monsters, and current events. The illustrations by José Guadalupe Posada accompanying each story, are nothing short of outstanding: stark engravings, appropriately stylized, of winged creatures, witches at the stake, demons.
A review of The Drop Off by David Stavanger
The Drop Off takes these notions of play, irreverence and art, and utilises the tools of poetry – redaction and silences, puns, the language of public discourse, rhythm and structure to lead the reader, almost by stealth, into sudden moments of intense vulnerability.
En Busca del Tiempo Perdido, a review of Indifferent Cities by Ángel García
Indifferent Cities raises compelling questions about the nature of family, of generations, of how we may reach a point in our lives when, regardless of whether our parents are living or deceased, we become, psychically, parents to our own parents and perhaps also children to our own children. Indifferent Cities, in inspiring the reader to consider these paradoxes, is anything but indifferent. On the contrary, it is poignant.
Confronting Trauma with Resilience: an Interview with Molly Johnsen
Molly Johnsen talks about her debut poetry book, Everything Alive, her poetry journey, the devastating car accident that the book centres on, her use of dark humor, epilepsy, grief, trauma, parenting, love and lots more.
A review of A Stranger Comes to Town by Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Schartz’s prose dazzles as we accompany Joe on his sleuthing. Early in the novel, he considers people seen from his apartment window: “Lots of people looked respectable, but weren’t, and how did I know this? From childhood, somehow. And what did respectable mean anyway? For all I knew I’d spent time in prison.”
A review of Outliving Michael by Steven Reigns
There’s a great deal of nostalgia in Outliving Michael, of course, remembering a friend who died a quarter century ago, but Reigns is also remembering his own youth, with that same sweet nostalgia. Michael has gone shopping for jeans at the mall, the occasion for Reigns to make this observation about the immortality of youth.
Cavalier Perspective: Last Essays 1952-1966 by André Breton
As we might expect, a wistful, retrospective tone runs through many of these pieces, sometimes subtly and under the surface, and sometimes quite explicitly. In one 1952 essay, “You Have the Floor, Young Seer of Things…”, Breton laments his inability to appreciate the new trends in postwar painting and contrasts that with the enthusiasm he felt in his youth for new art.
A review of Daphne by Kristen Case, Blood Feather by Karla Kelsey, and Phantom Number: An Abecedarium for April by Spring Ulmer,
Each of the texts also explores the interrogation and violence of language. In Daphne, language is presented as violent, erotic, and philosophical. The text plays with and warps definitions (this is especially evident in the analysis of the words “ravish” and “tonic”) to reveal embedded power structures within the way we use language.
A review of The Peach King by Inga Simpson
Inga Simpson writes books for all ages, and I’ve loved many of her books for adults, but her new book, The Peach Tree, is one of those picture books will become a classic and be read and re-read, kept and handed down.