Form doesn’t merely shape content, but creates it. This is a scary fact. Language threatens the freedom of things, making complexity seem fixed and turning loved ones into abstractions.
The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu – Augusto Higa Oshiro
With his passivity resulting from the weighty history of deprivation and discrimination, what are the conditions for the possibility of Nakamatsu’s enlightenment?
The Narrow Cage – Vasily Eroshenko
All of these characters, whether human or otherwise, are connected in their subjection to both nature’s and humanity’s whims.
Omovo seems in many ways detached from the day to day . . . That might be the best way to handle yourself in a world where baffling violence is as much a part of life as a breeze or birdsong.
Banzeiro Òkòtó: The Amazon as the Center of the World – Eliane Brum
Without its forests intact, the Earth faces collapse, just as the mind, body, and heart will crumble if our lungs rot ahead of schedule.
Everything I Never Wanted to Know – Christine Hume
The experience of reading Hume’s essays powerfully mimics how it feels to live in a world saturated with sexual violence.
Bruno’s Conversion – Tsipi Keller
At the heart of Jewish American fiction since 1945 are questions of assimilation, identity, faith, and the Holocaust. A handful of contemporary writers continue to engage these themes with renewed ambivalence, both advancing and complicating inherited literary style.
Black Observatory – Christopher Brean Murray
A mixture of flash fiction-like prose poems and sensory-laden verse, the collection itself is the black observatory.
A Spring of Poetry: Capsule Reviews
Eight capsule reviews of poetry and prose works from Ugly Duckling Presse, above/ground press, Subpress Editions, Tupelo Press, and Baobab Press
Lament for Julia – Susan Taubes
Julia’s disappearance is inseparable from the gaze that has described her, instructed her, reproached her, bemoaned her, and reveled in her for . . . 125 pages.