Interviews
Meet the founder of Vagabond Press and the author of over 21 books of prose, poetry and "shards."
Features
These novels by one of Britain's lesser known writers are worth hauling around the world.
New York City is refracted in the multiple poetic voices presented in this essay.
Reviews
POETRY
Two books by Elizabeth Robinson:
Harrow
House Made of Silver
Intense meditations on fundamental forms, these two new books tread the edges between the structure of faith and the experience of it.
Lip Service
Bruce Andrews
Both ironic and erotic, Lip Service implicates the reader in his or her own sexual politics as it revels in the linguistic possibilities of sexual vocabulary.
Disobedience
Alice Notley
A feisty, irreverent volume that gives the finger to many of the received ideas and unexamined assumptions inscribed in dominant culture.
The Gauguin Answer Sheet
Dennis Finnell
From a painting by Gauguin, Finnell gleans a fractal poetic that considers origins, identities, and the interlocution of time and space, painting and history.
Zirconia
Chelsey Minnis
In her first book, Minnis offers a unique prose poetry that stresses individual words and phrases.
My Sister Life
Joseph Lease
A poet of lyric grace and specific, evocative images, Lease engages in associative jumps while also offering narrative's edifying vitality.
Overtime
Joseph Millar
Before academia, there was blue-collar work. Millar gives voice to these average Americans just trying to deal with their everyday problems.
Useless Virtues
T. R. Hummer
Hummer closely examines the tools for transcendence and redemption in this powerful book of poems.
FICTION
COVER STORY
Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper
Harriet Scott Chessman
La Tour Dreams of the Wolf Girl
David Huddle
These two new novels have painters as their subjects, but how does the cover art help or hinder their project?
Wild Turkey
Michael Hemmingson
This new novel by one of the "high priests of transgressive fiction" takes the form of a contemporary noir thriller.
L.C.
Susan Daitch
First published in 1986, Susan Daitch's challenging debut novel centers on a fictional diary translated from the French.
Tarzan's Tonsilitis
Alfredo Bryce Echenique
In his latest novel, Latin American writer Echenique passes between the old and the new world through the letters of two lovers caught between the continents.
Hotel World
Ali Smith
Try this: judge a book by how many times the words on the page send your face up and out and your breath quickly inwards, in excitement, astonishment, joy, wonder.
Phone Calls from the Dead
Wendy Brenner
In her second collection of short stories, Brenner breathes life into a group of eccentrics whose hilarious predicaments are depicted with compassion.
Soliloquy
Kenneth Goldsmith
From the king of experience comes a new release, which consists of every word Kenneth Goldsmith said in one week.
NON-FICTION
Before & After
Stories from New York
edited by Thomas Beller
A stirring and impressive catalog of voices, Before & After collects short personal essays by New Yorkers on both sides of the demarcating chasm of 9/11.
War of the Words
edited by Joy Press
Once upon a time, the Voice Literary Supplement was capable of busting balls and warping minds, as these 40 pieces culled from the supplement's 20 years of existence demonstrate.
Dance of Days
Two Decades of Punk Rock in the Nation's Capital
Mark Andersen and Mark Jenkins
Dance of Days shows how the development of an artistic style--the earnest, propulsive post-punk of most Dischord bands--interacts with everything else in the artists' lives.
Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Buddhism
Gary Gach
Buddhism, of all religions, embraces irony and paradox, so don't blanch at this do-it-yourself manual on its history, teachings, practices and applications.
Star Trek
The Human Frontier
Michèle Barrett & Duncan Barrett
A literary and cultural theory specialist and her teen-aged son find thematic connections and intriguing continuities in Star Trek's treatment of humanity.
Eldorado
Bayard Taylor
A classic of travel writing, Eldorado collects the experiences of Bayard Taylor in Central and Northern California in 1849 during the gold rush.
Amped
Notes from a Go-Nowhere Punk Band
Jon Resh
Amped is as much about the unsung people who seek out the unheard music as it is about Spoke's years in the punk underground.
Looking for a Fight
Lynn Snowden Picket
When Picket took up boxing, she punched people real hard. Her new book explores the violence and pleasure she experienced inside the ring and out.
The City in Mind
Notes on the Urban Condition
James Howard Kunstler
Kunstler deftly relates how Louis-Napoleon and his architect transformed a medieval shanty town with no working sewers or clean water into the enduring glory that millions of tourists still seek out.