I spoke with Stuart over Zoom to discuss the dangers of beauty, the difficulties of depicting atrocity in art, and the value of humor in dark times.
A review of G-d, Sleep, and Chaos by Alan Fyfe
Despite the profane subjects: dole queues, building sites, and the bottom of coffee cups; Fyfe elevates the ordinary to extraordinary heights with captivating imagery, and a musicality that gently lulls the reader into a meditative trance. In ‘A Song for Saint Roch’ ‘two pristine cigarettes’ are juxtaposed with ‘two (painted) apples’: elevating the former to high art reminiscent of ‘The Plastic Bag Scene’ in the film American Beauty; viewed through a poet’s lens, to seek beauty from the most mundane items.
A review of Cyborg Fever by Laurie Sheck
Cyborg Fever is a hallucinatory universe of detached disembodied voices and isolated monads – leptons, bosons, black holes, and human beings — forever striving for a ‘unified field’ but forever defeated by entropy and the forces of dissolution, vast emptiness, and disarray.
A review of Love Letters to Ukraine from Uyava by Kalpna Singh-Chitnis
The author, Kalpna Singh-Chitnis, exhibits great empathy for the Ukrainian people. For example, in “War: A One Way Street,” the poet “driving in [her] town,” imagines “sirens blaring, tanks rolling, / and guns pointing at people resisting.” There are no doves, no olive trees and as the stanzas unfold, she becomes “a woman raped,” “a fallen soldier,” “a father in exodus.” She has the emotional range to feel what they feel, calling herself “a person, and a nation, an ally, and an adversary.”
A review of The Ones by Kathleen Latham
Pick up this collection if you’re looking for catharsis in looking back on a history of love won and love lost. It is definitely keyed toward a more mature audience, but then might have good advice for the young and inexperienced: it will be painful, but in enduring we find something so much greater.
A review of A Life in Frames by by Leonora Ross
A Life in Frames, Leonora Ross’s third novel, is the coming-of-age story of a gifted young artist and the journeys he embarks on in his quest for self-discovery and the pursuit of his dreams. The story opens with ten year old Lejf Busher lying on a blanket under the African night sky in his parents’ backyard in Otijwarongo, Namibia—exhausted, but eyes filled with dreams.
A review of Jehovah Jukebox by Joan Jobe Smith
By the time they became acquainted, Smith had quit dancing to pursue poetry. Bukowski would call her late at night and howl at her tales of being a go-go girl for seven years (“the bad luck time for / breaking a mirror, minimum sentence for a felony / conviction”). Bukowski, in his cheap L.A. apartment forty miles away “listened intently to my go-go girl tales.” Finally, one night, Bukowski told her: “You gotta write about all that madness, kid. So I did.” Jehovah Jukebox was conceived and born.
A review of City Nature by Martha Retallick
The best moments come from the struggle against solitude; with Retallick, it’s the trials-and-errors of learning to “think like water” with her co-op in a drought-filled era, of upcycling a gifted chandelier into a vine climbing gym and a sun-shaking pendant collage. Not the “much more” of products, but the “much more” of the lived-in; we are nature too. The struggle against solitude is the discovery of home, and it glints like pendants.
A review of Age Like a Yogi by Victoria Moran
Passionate about her subjects, her inspired writing makes for inspiring and effortless reading. In her radio shows, podcasts, and videos about other subjects, you get the feeling that she’s speaking directly to you. Similarly, her conversational writing style can make you feel like she’s writing directly to you.
A review of Mother’s Day In the Empire State Or, An Answer to the Arraignment of Women by Constantia Munda
This book is a serious rippler. And readers, dare I say, will be left holding a naked baby higher and higher above their heads as they step deeper and deeper onto the rocky bottom of a raging waterway. Footing will inevitably grow faulty. Vision impaired. And eventually they’ll be submerged, needing to come up for air.