Neither Weak Nor Obtuse – Jake Goldsmith
No one escapes, no one is physically invulnerable, we are all prisoners of a cruel chronicity.
The Secret Adventures of Order – Vincent Czyz
Czyz remains on guard against prose writers whose search for the poetic slides into squashy self-indulgence, like someone picking up a karaoke microphone with a mistaken confidence that they really can sing.
Seçkin adds an interesting nuance by depicting how feelings of appropriation can play out at a more intimate, family level.
Ross’s writing probes and tests assumptions that we often take for granted, and raises questions that will leave the reader musing, long after a story is finished.
No One is Talking About This – Patricia Lockwood
Its voice is powerful but unrelieved by other voices, by a readiness to put into question its own articulateness.
Lift Up the Stone: The Gospel According to Jonathan – Jonathan Harrington
Idiosyncratic and sometimes startling, these poems demonstrate both the elasticity of the sonnet form and the meditations of a fertile, original mind.
Selling the Farm: Descants from a Recollected Past – Debra Di Blasi
Selling the Farm does not offer an easy, glib greenness. A post-anthropocentric perspective — i.e., we need to get over ourselves — is a quixotic adventure, perhaps doomed, but a necessary leap of the imagination.