Loretta Collins Klobah / Courtesy of Peepal Tree
Loretta Collins Klobah’s Ricantations (Peepal Tree, 2018) is her second collection of poetry. The book has been selected as a Poetry Book Soc…
Book Reviews
January 15, 2019
January 10, 2019Enrapture Captivating Media / Unsplash What becomes a legend most? Great talent, suffering, and mystery . . . three ingredients that French poet Arthur Rimbaud possessed in spades. General readers wi…
January 7, 2019Michael Bazzett / Courtesy of Milkweed Editions and the Star Tribune Long overdue, Michael Bazzett’s verse translation of The Popol Vuh (Milkweed Editions, 2018) does for the Mayan creation…
December 18, 2018Photo by Eran Finkle / Flickr Jeff Talarigo’s third book, In the Cemetery of the Orange Trees (Etruscan Press, 2018), offers a compelling assessment of the collective psychological state of…
November 20, 2018Photo by jplenio / Pixabay “Acknowledging my illness,” writes Melyssa A. Harmon in Flecks of Red (Nautical Life Press, 2018), “allows me to take emotional ownership of all that comes with it…
September 18, 2018Background photo by tsauquet / Pixabay Genre is the most significant category in which books trade on the literary marketplace. Nonfiction or fiction. Memoir or novel. Literary fiction or romance, ho…
September 11, 2018Photo: Jarle Vines Norway is a country that shows up on the stage of Weltliteratur quite regularly. Henrik Ibsen had to live for more than two decades abroad to find the Archimedean point ne…
August 23, 2018Orientalism is over. The era of our culture, history, and image being constructed, codified, and represented by Western scholars is gone. Today we tell our own stories and are given voice by our own…
July 24, 2018Aside from romance, horror is perhaps the least globally diverse genre of popular fiction by measure of the authors writing in or translated to English. While film seems to have no trouble making hor…
July 9, 2018Photo of Tracy K. Smith by Rachel Eliza Griffiths Reading Wade in the Water (Graywolf Press, 2018), US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith’s fourth book, is an experience unlike any I’ve had before…
June 6, 2018America has long been at the crossroads of accepting diversity and empire-building. American interactions with diverse peoples have often been less than ideal. During confusing, often unjust, dealing…
May 16, 2018Photo: Zakaria Wakram Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language. – Meister Eckhart We live in unexemplary times, maddened by fear, murde…
March 28, 2018Photo of Lea Goldberg and drawing by Goldberg from She’erit HaChayim (1971) / Courtesy of the Gnazim Institute, Hebrew Writers’ Association Lea Goldberg (1911–1970), one of the most importan…
February 20, 2018Major Jackson / Photo courtesy of the author. Kehinde Wiley’s Morpheus (2008) appears on the cover of Roll Deep Major Jackson’s latest book of poetry, Roll Deep (Norton, 20…
January 31, 2018Leïla Slimani / Photo courtesy of FrenchCulture.org I have barely read any critical pieces on Leïla Slimani’s novel Chanson douce (Gallimard, 2016), winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt i…
January 18, 2018Naomi Klein / Photo by Kourosh Keshiri “It is easier,” Mark Fisher writes in Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, “to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capital…
January 17, 2018“A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” and our aim is to reach the unattainable, the unknown through the “viewless wings of Poesy.” “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” thinks the…
January 10, 2018Misuzu Kaneko (1903–1930) is a poet who holds a special place in the hearts of many Japanese as a voice of compassion in a difficult time for the country. The recently published Are You an Echo? T…
December 20, 2017Jonas Zdanys is a master lyricist. The bilingual poet (English and Lithuanian) displays his versatile ability with a variety of poetic styles in several recent collections. In Red Stones (201…
October 9, 2017Layli Long Soldier’s Whereas (Graywolf, 2017), a poetry finalist for the 2017 National Book Awards, contends with the U.S. federal terminologies in relationship to Indigenous people and rein…
September 18, 2017A still from Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou The word CAMERA never appears in my scripts. I don’t prepare. I never know what I’m going to do in the next scene.—Luis Buñuel Simply…
June 28, 2017Mathias Énard / Photo © Marc Melki / Courtesy of New Directions The quickest way to turn someone off from the possibility of reading Mathias Énard’s astounding novel, Compass (New Directions…
June 7, 2017Biljana Obradović captures the immigrant’s distrust of the permanent in Incognito. Serbian American poet Biljana Obradović has lived in Yugoslavia, Greece, India, and in the US, whe…
May 31, 2017Tanure Ojaide / Urhobo Historical Society Tanure Ojaide seamlessly blends the personal with the political in this volume of verse to paint a compelling portrait of a Nigeria always in transition.…
May 24, 2017Poet John Kinsella inhabits and lends voice to the landscapes around him in Firebreaks. In Firebreaks (Norton, 2016), the title John Kinsella chooses for his twenty-third…
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Illustration by Shovo / Adobe StockI’m sitting on an exam table talking to a nurse practitioner about a pain in my lower left abdomen. I’ve only ever…
In Redolent Rush, a recent short fiction collection published by Hawakal, based in New Delhi, India, we have nineteen short stories by…
Epic Photos / Adobe StockAboard the North Star IX
December 26, 208. . .
My dear Celeste:
First, allow me to say that you were right, so many…
Maryam Lamei, Birds Are Gathered in God (2021) / Courtesy of the artist / www.maryamlamei.com
Searching for solace following the events…
Illustration by fran_kie / Adobe StockIf I Must Die
If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some…
