by Sam Rowe

Google, Godwin, & the Philosopher’s Stone

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Godwin’s conviction of the possibility of immortality, which only a few years ago might have seemed quixotic and a bit embarrassing, has come back into fashion.

Dear Herculine – Aaron Apps

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Dear Herculine responds to the trauma of shame in a curious way, by failing to do precisely what shame is supposed to induce one to do: cover up.

Revelator – Ron Silliman

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It is as if the atomistic building-blocks of his sentence-based universe had melted and run into one another.

Gravesend – Cole Swenson

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If Swensen brings us into contact with ghosts in Gravesend, it is by means of these subterranean poems concealed in the unconscious of their printed counterparts.

What Are Poets For? – Gerald L. Bruns

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Bruns does not provide an answer to the question of what poets are for, but he does provide an extended answer to the question of what poets do: a great many things, in a great many ways.

Fantasies of Contact: Erica Baum, Susan Howe, and the Poetics of Paper

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The most enduringly interesting meditations on paper are always more than acts of mourning or expressions of nostalgia.

Panopticon – Steve McCaffery

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PANOPTICON is ultimately a profoundly optimistic work, a leap of faith that chooses to revel in the opacity of language because — well, just because.

Life Sentences – William H. Gass

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A man in his library, padding from shelf to shelf, drifting from book to book, running his fingers along dusty spines, maybe reading a sentence or two before moving on — if this sort of belles-lettristic languor strikes your fancy, then Life Sentences might be for you.

Buffet World – Donato Mancini

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Buffet World is experimental poetry’s answer to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, interspersing verse renderings of “fun facts” about the food industry (at times troubling, at times whimsical, at times both) with found images of artery-clogging comestibles.

Kindertotenwald – Franz Wright

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Since it’s a Franz Wright book, it comes as no surprise that Kindertotenwald discovers and traverses new emotional spaces, new ways of naming desire, loneliness, guilt, and grief—from a poet with a long track-record of piercing, lucid insight into the human condition, we could hardly expect otherwise.