A Lamp in Broad Daylight

Review by Eero Talo Shoat Rumblin: His Sensations and Ideasby Samuel DelanyIndependently Published, 2020 The novel has two axes of development: lateral developments that allow us to tell the stories of a greater number of people, and vertical developments that deepen our understanding of lives already within the literary imagination. The vertical axis is closely related to poetry and marked by the apprehension of new … Continue reading A Lamp in Broad Daylight

“Wings are being read as they are being spread like thighs:” j/j hastain’s Queer Academies

Review by Petra Kuppers SapphoPunk j/j hastain Spuyten Duyvil 2015 “Wings are being read as they are being spread like thighs. It is possible to read a body without knowing how to read the words that might be used to describe it. Inscribe by presence.”   The prolific j/j hastain writes queered priest’s words, steeped in thick somatic cauls, in sexual winged ecstasies, in a … Continue reading “Wings are being read as they are being spread like thighs:” j/j hastain’s Queer Academies

Questioning the Role of Saying: A Review of Ari Banias’ Anybody

Review by Eli Lynch-El Bechelany Anybody Ari Banias W.W. Norton & Company 2016 The most excited I’ve been about my creative writing degree was while creating a list of readings for my independent study, staring at my computer at 2am with dry eyes, researching and writing down the names of authors, centering queer, trans, and BIPOC voices. This was the first time it’s been possible … Continue reading Questioning the Role of Saying: A Review of Ari Banias’ Anybody

This Is Not Fake: Who Are We, Animals, in the Anthrome? A Review of Make Yourself Happy by Eleni Sikelianos

Review by Melissa Buckheit Make Yourself Happy Eleni Sikelianos Coffeehouse Press, 2017 Breathe. Make yourself happy. Resist. Remember what you are. Insist and document, observe. Cry. Laugh. Do not die completely. Listen and then, speak. Live. If Eleni Sikelianos’ new book had a simple mantra, this might be it. Into the living and dying field of our biosphere, Eleni Sikelianos surges forth in Make Yourself … Continue reading This Is Not Fake: Who Are We, Animals, in the Anthrome? A Review of Make Yourself Happy by Eleni Sikelianos

The Last Vispo Anthology, edited by Nico Vassilakis and Crag Hill

Review by Alison Watkins The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008 Nico Vassilakis and Crag Hill, editors Fantagraphic Books, 2012 The Last Vispo Anthology, by Nico Vassilakis and Crag Hill, seeks to capture the explosion of visual poetry that surfaced as the result of computerization and digitization intersecting the humanities in the decade between 1998-2008. By naming the collection The Last Vispo Anthology, Vassilakis and … Continue reading The Last Vispo Anthology, edited by Nico Vassilakis and Crag Hill

Creative Engagement with Eileen Myles’ Snowflake

by j/j hastain Review of Snowflake / Different Streets Wave Books, 2012 I do not sense much difference (in tone of language or in language itself) between Myles’ poems and her prose writing. Regardless of genre there is always this feeling of being in a fucked up richness–a richness that is dense and also rooted–rooted in manifestations of magnificence (“an edible saint” / “I imagine … Continue reading Creative Engagement with Eileen Myles’ Snowflake

Dream on Dreamer: Testify, by Joseph Lease

Review by Anne Elena Eyre Testify Joseph Lease Coffee House Books, 2011 America. Where are the bodies in the streets? Surely there’s enough to protest as there was if ever before? New battles disguised behind vacant words. Words are what interconnect our consciousness through webs to known and unknown realms. Words are magic because words can manifest actions. This is recognizable in actions that necessitate … Continue reading Dream on Dreamer: Testify, by Joseph Lease

A Homeric Echo: Lisa Jarnot’s Iliad XXII

Review by Piotr Gwiazda The Iliad Book XXII: The Death of Hector by Lisa Jarnot Atticus/Finch Books, 2006 Bookthug (Toronto), 2007 It is often noted about Homer, the “compiler of the Iliad” (as George Steiner calls him), that in his portrayal of the Trojan War he remains neutral. Homer famously doesn’t take sides; there are no winners or losers among his fighting warriors. The defeated … Continue reading A Homeric Echo: Lisa Jarnot’s Iliad XXII

Sherwood Forest, by Camille Roy

Review by Alyse Bensel Sherwood Forest Camille Roy Futurepoem Books, 2011 ISBN: 978-0982279854 128 pp Paperback: $16.00 Sherwood Forest, Camille Roy’s sixth poetry collection, exposes the performance of gender. Marginalized people populate their own world that sweeps across the book’s pages. These poems reenact and reconfigure social norms, disorienting yet evolving throughout the book in prose and lyric forms alike. In a preface to the … Continue reading Sherwood Forest, by Camille Roy