Category: Blog

  • In Parachutes Descending [Book Review]

    In Parachutes Descending [Book Review]

    Michael Trammell

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    In Parachutes Descending.Tana Jean Welch. University of Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh, PA. 2024.             Tana Welch interlaces sea level rise, the concept of Seasteading, and stanzas packed with intense passion in her new collection In Parachutes Descending. What makes this book so striking is the narrators’ determination to shift the rules and norms of our culture,… Read more

  • Odd Bloom Seen from Space [Book Review]

    Odd Bloom Seen from Space [Book Review]

    Michael Trammell

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    Odd Bloom Seen from Space.Timothy Daniel Welch. University of Iowa Press: Iowa City, IA. 2017. This collection’s poems whirl with spirals of allusions, intense intimacy, and heartbreak. They exude a heat that simmers and leaves a reader waiting in awe for the surprise of the next line. Awe is what drives many of the works… Read more

  • The Burning Bride [Book Review]

    The Burning Bride [Book Review]

    Rafael

    Trish MacEnulty’s novel The Burning Bride sparkles with a high-energy plot and tight, precise prose. And what makes the book especially fascinating is the carefully researched details of early 20th-century New York City and St. Augustine. Read more

  • Lalin Bonheur: Bewitched by Talons [Book Review]

    Lalin Bonheur: Bewitched by Talons [Book Review]

    Rafael

    In Lalin Bonheur: Bewitched by Talons there is powerful magic and big trouble in the French Quarter of nineteenth century New Orleans. Shapeshifters, werewolves, a witch, prophetic dreams, and ancient African gods in the Old South haunt these pages. Read more

  • Privilege [Book Review]

    Privilege [Book Review]

    Rafael

    In the prologue of this fast-paced and beautifully written mystery novel, country girl Ruby Randolph–whose boyfriend Billy has been arrested and whose trailer has been burned down–shows up homeless, barefoot and braless at criminal defense attorney Gardner Randolph’s office. Read more

  • Bluer and More Vast [Book Review]

    Bluer and More Vast [Book Review]

    Rafael

    Michael Hettich is an extraordinary poet. In his two most recent collections, To Start an Orchard and Bluer and More Vast, Hettich’s brilliance shines brightly. What especially makes his work vibrant is his unique blend of vividly capturing the everyday quotidian moments of his narrators and characters and mixing these flashes with a unique and… Read more

  • The Feral Condition [Book Review]

    The Feral Condition [Book Review]

    Rafael

    Using a backdrop of four starkly different locales, Gaylord Brewer crafts a journey replete with fables of a man observing and interacting with the natural world, before coming to terms with his own “ferality.” Through language and imagery both striking and candid, Brewer writes to discover and convey universal truths from his observations of the… Read more

  • Avenue of Champions [Book Review]

    Avenue of Champions [Book Review]

    Rafael

    In Clay Blancett’s first novel Avenue of Champions the reader is taken on a fascinating odyssey through, not Homer’s Mediterranean Sea, but the streets and back alleys of Richmond, Virginia. Read more

  • Here on Rue Morgue Avenue [Book Review]

    Here on Rue Morgue Avenue [Book Review]

    Rafael

    The poet Cynie Cory springs word-songs like hot hail from the sky in Here on Rue Morgue Avenue, a collection of almost-sonnets, almost cantos, that grab language by the gills, that fling stanzas skyward into a fiery stratosphere. Read more

  • Particularly Dangerous Situation [Book Review]

    Particularly Dangerous Situation [Book Review]

    Rafael

    The start of this Alabama odyssey, a novella, is told in a melodic and cyclical way. Yet its content is both and neither. The story is specific and general, told by eight tattered, deranged people. The reader relies on what these characters have or may not have seen because of a barrage of enormous, surreal,… Read more