The Willow King – Meelis Friedenthal
With our own era’s debates on science, truth, and the merit of religion, THE WILLOW KING makes us appreciate how much, and how little, have changed in the intervening three hundred years.
Against Everything – Mark Greif
It is Greif’s willingness to court his own ambivalences and inconsistencies that make these essays both enjoyable and genuinely edifying.
Down Below – Leonora Carrington
For Carrington, surrealism seems less of an art movement designed to attack the world, and more like something purged from the body, like a ball of mucous or grease on the skin after a fever.
He drinks, he gambles, he obsesses over his emotions, and he sleeps. Occasionally he writes.
Annihilation Songs – Jason DeBoer
The syntax of struggle does not prevail.
Imagine Wanting Only This – Kristen Radtke
Part of what had excited me was something that doesn’t usually make for compelling criticism, that is, I had found IMAGINE WANTING ONLY THIS to be relatable.
If one must confess, they should do so intelligently. They must interrogate their own confession.
Such Small Hands – Andrés Barba
SUCH SMALL HANDS is a slender book that falls into that other category: a tidily executed project, one with tremendous tonal intimacy and rhythmic language.
Carter succeeds in creating a lush but airless environment in which the anxieties of “adulting” — finding direction, meaning, maintaining a home — are amplified to crippling effect.
The Necro-Luminescence of Pink Mist – Ed Steck
Escher-like decompositions of selves, objects, bodies, places, and moments congeal baroquely, but there is nothing speculative or futuristic to this world. In fact, the world of PINK MIST feels chillingly contemporary.