But Then, Inexplicably: On Chris Beckett's "Tomorrow"
For anyone with a tendency to procrastinate, “tomorrow” is a familiar word.
Become Through Unbecoming: On Jackie Wang’s "The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void"
This collection, a 2021 National Book Award finalist for poetry, spirals in and out of the imaginary, like Andrei Tarkovky’s chignons on the backs of faceless heads.
from Tracy Daugherty's "The Land and the Days"
From the roof of the Cotton County Courthouse, looking out past the flagpole toward the west, you can see the lots on which my grandparents’ houses stood; the bare patch where Tracy’s dog, Blackie, lies buried; the filling station, still operating just across the highway from Deenie’s old yard; the Hart-Wyatt Funeral Home; the rodeo arena; the unused railroad depot; Sultan Park; the Electric Co-op’s grain elevators.
The Least Funny Thing: On Percival Everett's "The Trees"
The first thing to say about Percival Everett’s latest effort, The Trees: A Novel, is that it’s funny.
(Be)Longing in the Midwest: On Jackson Bliss' "Counterfactual Love Stories & Other Experiments"
A common critique of experimental short fiction is that it may fail to balance its brainier, genre-bending tricks with true intuition and care for its characters and the reader.
Rückenfigur and a Five-Pound Bag of M&Ms: On Andrew Zawacki's "Unsun"
There are many things a poem is not: a photograph, a radio, a 3D printer. A poem is not tuned to FM or AM; the poem written on a page cannot be manually refocused.
The Infrastructure of Opportunity: On Fiona Hill's "There Is Nothing for You Here"
In the Fall of 2019, the nation watched President Trump being tried by the House of Representatives in the first of two impeachments.
Finding Meaning in the Micro: On Sonya Huber's "Supremely Tiny Acts"
Deforestation, spree shooters, plastic bag islands, the last vaquita (a shy, small dolphin with panda eyes)… The world, if we’re being honest, is screwed.
Point of Reviəw: At 90, A Look Back at George Forbes
I remember when I once wrote a piece about George Forbes that was considered “too favorable” by an alternative press editor.
The Space to Become Oneself: On Crystal Wilkinson's "Perfect Black"
Perfect Black is the long-awaited first book of poetry from Kentucky’s Poet Laureate, Crystal Wilkinson.
The Deflation of Spatial Imagination: On Columbus’ Future in “Ready Player One”
Perhaps the best place to view the future of Columbus, Ohio is from the vestiges of its fictionalized futures in Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One (2011) and its sequel, Ready Player Two (2020).
Sick Books 2021: A Year in Sick Reading
In 2021, which is still going at time of writing, I’ve had 112 days of migraine—about 1 out of 3 days, worse than average but what are you going to do.
The Impossibility of Critique: On "The French Dispatch" & May '68
Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch is a movie in vignettes, a whole that emerges through the sum of its parts.
Grandiose and Mythic, Beautiful and Dangerous: On Sean Avery Medlin's "808s & Otherworlds"
Sean Avery Medlin’s debut collection, 808s & Otherworlds (Two Dollar Radio, 2021), is set up like a deluxe box set, the kind that collects a bevy of best tracks and unreleased B-sides and packages it with new art and extended liner notes full of stories verging on myth.
The Enormous Scope of Male Desperation: On Cameron MacKenzie's "River Weather"
…I will be here when America is nothing but a place of ruins.
What Rapture, What Agony: On Heinrich von Kleist & "Anecdotes"
On October 1, 1810, about a week before his 33rd birthday, the author and playwright Heinrich von Kleist published the first issue of the world’s very first daily newspaper.
Collapsing Time: A Conversation with Mike DeCapite
Mike DeCapite’s Jacket Weather is the story of a man in his fifties rekindling a relationship with June, a woman with whom he reveled in New York’s thriving punk scene as a youth.
The Places Within Us All: On Gwen Goodkin's "A Place Remote"
Growing up, especially in a small town, means deciding whether to leave home or stay.
Two Poems from "Cold Candies" by Lee Young-Ju
A plant nobody planted grows in the window across from mine on the fourth floor.