Criticism

Microreview: Anthony McCann, I ♥ Your Fate

Poems whose  nabashed romanticism and faith in simple lyricism remain powerful. 

  • Nate Pritts

How to be Happy

The ethics of David Foster Wallace.

  • Leland de la Durantaye

Into the Breach

China Miéville’s other reality.

  • Henry Farrell

Drowned Out

Julie Taymor’s The Tempest

  • Alan A. Stone

Saving Souls

David Grossman’s article of faith.

  • Vivian Gornick

Business As Usual

We’re just biding time for the next Wall Street collapse.

  • Jonathan Kirshner

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Our Poems, Ourselves

Does autobiography make good poetry?

  • Stephanie Burt

Microreview: Rachel Loden, Dick of the Dead

An investigation into American sexual and political consciousness with Nixon at its center. 

  • Fred Muratori

Microreview: Kate Greenstreet, The Last Four Things

Poems preoccupied with details: the concrete, physical materials of future and past. 

  • Sara Femenella

Microreview: Ken Cheng, Juvenilia

A collection that walks the high wire between deeply felt trauma and poetic artifact.

  • Sumita Chakraborty

Microreview: Monica Youn, Ignatz

Humor and love act like cat and mouse in this collection.

  • Nick Admussen

Microreview: Barbara Claire Freeman, Incivilities

Poems whose power to depict the zeitgeist rivals the iconic image making of Dorothea Lange.

  • Virginia Konchan

Life Work

Nicholson Baker grows up

  • John Crowley

The Side of Love

In his poems and essays, Dan Chiasson proves equally adept at rigorous self-interrogation and at an intellectual probing of the outer world.

  • Piotr Florczyk

Suppose You’re an Idiot

Mark Twain tells his own story.

  • Roger Boylan

All Of Humanity

King Lear on the big screen.

  • Alan A. Stone

The Raw and the Cooked

On spontaneity in poetry.

  • Christopher Schmidt

Catch the Dying Light

Out of mourning and its aftermath, The Bride of E asserts a new and energized approach to elegy.

  • Lindsay Turner

Microreview: Aaron Belz, Lovely, Raspberry

Poems that embrace narrative, brevity, down-to-earth diction, and slapstick.

  • Jason Labbe

Review: Union!

By Ish Klein.

  • Kristina Marie Darling

Microreview: Dara Wier, Selected Poems

A lack of philosophical posturing, name-dropping and other navel-gazing tics makes this collection very attractive.

  • Virginia Konchan

Review: The Dance of No Hard Feelings

By Mark Bibbins.

  • Fred Muratori

No Letting Go

Bob Hicok's Words for Empty and Words for Full.
 

  • Keith Taylor

Review: The Mansion of Happiness

By Robin Ekiss.

  • Elisabeth Divis
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