Reviews + Notes
bathosmtn: -PAUL KLINGER, from RUBBLE PAPER, PAPER RUBBLE (Further Other Book Works 2013) Last week I got to hear chapters of this, voiced with the phonetic settling of steel beams set gently into a squat frame to drape all Texas over. Tho Klinger’s reading was dutiful to the work and serious and amiable in just …
bathosmtn: Barthelme Only Likes Visual Poetry
furtherotherbookworks: From Sarah Campbell’s WE USED TO BE GENERALS, forthcoming from FOBW.
The Strings of Walnetto Arrangements by Ben Estes My rating: 4 of 5 stars Punky is right I say it is right so it must be Right Night at the poetry house–crickets chipping in a not-quite-stein voice for all the rabbits and cymbals popping out the dampness. I low the low in the voice of …
Barn Burned, Then by Michelle Taransky My rating: 5 of 5 stars I continue in awe of the way Taransky can break a line. The poems are as worked as work can be, but broken thank goodness, broken like champs. Can’t imagine the lines any differently. But I don’t really think the crux of this …
Born Two by Allison Cobb My rating: 5 of 5 stars A romp(er) in the sense that everything is worn, frayed, last legs etc. That the language is newish and known, a sound fulcrum, & um (sic) becoming. No being the master in these poems, no meaning no to those who wish to ‘ah’ at …
NO, I WILL BE IN THE WOODS by Michelle Taransky My rating: 5 of 5 stars It was raining raining raining when I got the mail and opened it and read this book (thank goodness) instead of doing nothing. And what a beautiful book of poems printed on opaque vellum and what a treat to …
A ten-week temporary workspace for the exploration of generative practices in contemporary experimental writing. The goal of the space is two-fold: 1. To read, discuss and debate contemporary approaches to experimental writing. 2. To produce new work in innovative ways that engage with contemporary strategies of appropriation, erasure, recycling, remixing, framing, stealing, copying, pasting, recovery, documentation, …
The Fruit of the Tree by Edith Wharton My rating: 3 of 5 stars This was my first real Wharton (besides Ethan Frome and Bunner Sisters, two relatively short works). Gotta say I was impressed. It’s so nice to follow early Woolf (Night & Day) with a minor Wharton. They work in different, almost oppositional, ways. …
Night And Day by Virginia Woolf My rating: 3 of 5 stars Sort of a snoozer as Woolf goes. I can’t say if anyone but Mrs. Hilbery got my attention. The book was just so labored and overthought and… I don’t know… Sort of useless in it’s accumulation of activities and thoughts. Just never seemed …
Pause Button by Kevin Davies My rating: 5 of 5 stars The first thing that hit me about this book was how masterful Davies is at adding/subtracting text. While there’s plenty of books out there with “erasures” (which usually inject air into a heavier text), this book has “deletions.” Like the text was shot thru. …
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen My rating: 5 of 5 stars Swooped in for the reread and longed and thinned (sighed) as to howandwhy the arrangement of figurines so pleases me. In order to form a more perfect union and secure the blessings of liberty. Times four I have read pride and prejudice and …
The Trial by Franz Kafka My rating: 5 of 5 stars I picked up this book a few years ago and put it down because I got too Kafka-ed by the mazery. I just couldn’t put it together, couldn’t understand why sentences were written the way that that were. Thank goodness I gave it a …
living must bury by Josie Sigler My rating: 4 of 5 stars Gotta say that I loved the “Contents” in this book. What is usually a list of titles and page numbers, Sigler weaves into a whopper of a poem. I’m a sucker for prayerish poems and “Contents” was one of the best I’ve read …
Absolute Bob by Anne Portugal My rating: 5 of 5 stars This one will give you whip lash it’s so fast and engaging. I can’t say I know if it’s about anything except the act of doing things and having them done. Images captured, buildings erected, reprieves granted, disasters ensued and and and “Bob;” a …
The Geoglyph by Patrick Kosiewicz My rating: 3 of 5 stars This ode to natural sciences really spread out on the page. It took me about 15 minutes to read all 77 pages and I’m a pretty slow reader. Spanning the creation of the earth to its burgeoning wildlife, it was a macro-topic which is …
Fruitlands by Kate Colby My rating: 3 of 5 stars I have no idea about this book. Having forced myself thru lines like “concentric desire outspreads / her strained connectives” to get to more interesting poems like False Spring and Untitled Triptych – I just don’t know. Colby is obviously talented but maybe a little …
To Light Out by Karen Weiser My rating: 2 of 5 stars While the lyric in these poems was exciting and the imagination is certainly there, I just couldn’t get past the thinking — a quadrupling-up a metaphors to describe what exactly? Angels? Birth? I did stop caring. And got frustrated. View all my reviews
Under the Sun by Rachel Levitsky My rating: 5 of 5 stars Take a story and foreshorten it replace the names and re-lace the conversation more awkwardly so that thinking is a fact/axis and apologize say sorry. Pivot on “this” and “which.” Pivot any spinning thing desperately this swiftness and silence things happen in. Indeed …