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Current Issue: No. 301

Gary Barwin: A Radiant Incipience: Build a Wind Turbine or Get Out of the Way, Review of Plenitude by Daniel Sarah Karasik

Posted on July 5, 2023

Daniel Sarah Karasik’s Plenitude is not only a cogent articulation of trans experience, identity and rights, but an incisive systemic reading — often a socialist or Marxist reading — with several side trips to consider Jewishness. By situating gender, queerness and identity within the larger context they bring a broader analysis of how culture can subsume and often commodify the personal. And because this is poetry, we’re aware that the tropes of lyric positionality (including the lyric “I”) are also implicated.

Emily Skov-Nielsen: “What am I / Water’s Bitch?” Review of Wet Dream by Erin Robinsong

Posted on July 5, 2023

While considering my sprawl of notes from my reading, and re-reading, of Erin Robinsong’s second full-length book of poetry, Wet Dream, and wondering how to begin this review, I called to mind the following quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland:

“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English), “now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was!”

Kevin Bushell: Poetry — not a jeux des mots but a weapon used to battle for historical truth, Review of The Ventriloquist: Poetic Narratives from the Womb of War by Gary Geddes

Posted on June 29, 2023

The current geo-political events in Ukraine make the release of Gary Geddes’ latest collection, (The Ventriloquist: Poetic Narratives from the Womb of War (Rock’s Mills Press), all the more timely. Geddes has gathered in this one collection four previous books on the theme of war: Letter of the Master of Horse (1973), War & Other Measures (1976), The Terracotta Army (1984), and Hong Kong Poems (1987).

Stop! Look! Listen! Derrick Austin's Music Recommendation

Posted on June 27, 2023

Though it was only released a month ago as I write this, Kelela’s album Raven has been on constant rotation: whether it’s the summery “On the Run,” the piercingly erotic “Sorbet,” or the emotionally expansive “Enough for Love.” Her fusion of R&B, house, and electronica is like no one else. Unlike a lot of contemporary albums, I tend to listen to Raven from start to finish. It asks you to immerse yourself.  

Stop! Look! Listen! John Wall Barger's Movie Recommendation

Posted on June 23, 2023

For my birthday a few years ago—August, 2020, just months into the pandemic—my partner Tiina bought me a projector, so we could watch films on our living room wall, and a subscription to the Criterion Channel. I’d always been a film lover, but this put me over the top. Since then I’ve been watching at least four or five old classic movies per week.

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