Shan’s “city” is also the family, nature, love, time, dreams, reality. Place (the literal, physical city) is important, and travel among these physical realities is part of the dynamic Shan writes about in these poems—otherness, newness, migration—but these are not poems of leisure and repose, and place is just one of the elements.
Author:
A review of Take Me With You Next Time by Janis Hubchman
Hubschman has a close style with a mixture of tenses, one that always stays close to the mind of the woman whose story this is. She tends to chew to the pith with brief character descriptions: “…Nina was at least a half-foot taller than Joy with dark cropped hair and fashionable chunky-framed glasses”.
A review of Manuali’i by Rex Letoa Paget
What I appreciated most about this book was the richness of the poetry with its combination of striking imagery, profound thoughts, subtle spirituality and cultural complexity.
A review of But There’s So Much DIY in IVF That We Can’t Be Sure by Toby Goostree
Without being didactic, Toby Goostree presents all of the implications of the very real trials of hopeful parents trying to conceive a child, their attitudes, their hope and their despair, their grief (“Oh, foolish plans! / Oh, smug house in a good school district!” he writes in “The Scratch”).
A review of Fog & Car by Eugene Lim
Eugene Lim has buried a layer of magic deep below the surface of the early chapters and it rises slowly as the narrative progresses. When it finally surfaces on the page, it shimmers along the edges of Sarah and Jim’s lives, turning the banal into the weird and supernatural.
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A review of Girl at the End of the World by Erin Carlyle
Each poem serves as a poignant vignette, exploring themes of opioid addiction, childhood, familial relationships, broader environmental grief, and the struggle for survival. Carlyle skillfully captures the disorienting experience of losing a complicated father to addiction while the world itself seems to be unraveling.
Shifting Perceptions: A Review of Apparitions by Sybil Baker
What is true? What is not? The protagonist, Simone, arrives in Istanbul with her friend, Agnes. The city, partly European and partly Asian, hints at the dichotomies in Simone’s life and the fusion and confusion she encounters.
A review of Write Like a Man by Ronnie A. Grinberg
Still, despite occasional over-interpretation, this is a valuable, well-researched and highly readable account of an important chapter of American intellectual life. These individuals lived fascinating lives and had far-reaching impact on American culture.
A review of The Universe of Lost Messages by Janet Stilton
The plot follows a conspiracy by an organisation called the Fist seeking to harness their charm for nefarious ends. The mad storyline twists and turns so much that Stilson feels the need to explicate every detail.