Since 1968
The Nerve of it: Poems New and Selected, by Lynn Emanuel. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015. $17, 120 pages.
Many approach career-spanning poetry volumes expecting a chronological presentation of the poet’s main styles and themes, where a smattering of earlier …
Mr. and Mrs. Doctor, by Julie Iromuanya. Coffee House Press, 2015. $17, 292 pages.
In the Bible, God tests the faith of Job by taking away his servants, slaughtering his plentiful herds of livestock, and murdering his children. After …
We Were The People Who Moved, by David Ebenbach. Tebot Bach, 2015. $16, 95 pages.
We Were The People Who Moved (Tebot Bach 2015) is David Ebenbach’s fifth book and first full-length poetry collection. Concerned with both place …
Shame|Shame, by Devin Becker. BOA Editions, 2015. $13, 104 pages.
To say the poems in Devin Becker’s new collection of poetry, Shame|Shame, are about shame misses the point. Rather, many of these poems deal with a particular variety …
Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, by Patricia Lockwood. Penguin Poets, 2014. $20.00, 80 pages.
Lockwood’s outrageous poems transport the reader into a world overflowing with hyper-sexualized and twisted humor, intertwined with her own personal difficulties concerning love, war, and rape. Her …
The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón, by Carlos Gamerro (translated by Ian Barnett). And Other Stories, 2015. $16, 352 pages.
Carlos Gamerro’s surreal and very funny novel The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón follows the …
Plunk, by Tom C. Hunley. WSC Press, 2015. $16, 67 pages.
Why isn’t Tom C. Hunley a household name? We know Airwick and the Dyson Ball, but why isn’t Hunley, the author of four full-length books of poetry as well …
Juventud, by Vanessa Blakeslee. Curbside Splendor, October 2015. $12, 300 pages.
Over the past year, a number of high-profile novels have moved beyond American insularity to engage questions of social justice. Dinaw Mengestu’s All Our Names (2014) follows a former …
Wastoid, by Matthias Svalina. Big Lucks Books, 2014. $15, 154 pages.
In his collection Wastoid, Matthias Svalina revitalizes the sonnet. Although Svalina is not the first poet to take the sonnet beyond the traditional fourteen lines, he radically upsets …
Belief is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe, by Lori Jakiela. Atticus Books, 2015. $15, 293 pages.
I’ve been having a hard time writing about Lori Jakiela’s beautiful new memoir Belief is Its Own Kind of Truth, Maybe. I …
