Interviews
A Conversation with Andrew Schelling
Poet, translator, and essayist, Andrew Schelling teaches poetry, Sanskrit, and wilderness writing at Naropa University. Here he discusses everything from Tantric texts to poetry's role in the "grand ecology theater."
Features
The Gathering Spirit of Jane Bowles
Where is Jane Bowles buried-and why did they move her grave?
This essay explores the stormy history of John Steinbeck's novella Lifeboat, made into a motion picture directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Reviews
POETRY
The Guns and Flags Project
Geoffrey G. O'Brien
Written in a stark, impersonal tone and resisting any easy intimacies, O'Brien's first book of poems distills a rare elemental language in this age of hype and consumerism.
Book of My Nights
Li-Young Lee
In this long-awaited third volume of poetry, Lee collects 35 lyrical nocturnes that mark a shift to a more hermetic mode of expression.
Airs, Waters, Places
Bin Ramke
The genuine world-the ontological world-is nowhere and in all things, hidden and ubiquitous at once. Ramke's latest offering discovers a world in which we strike for wisdom where we can.
The Fiddler's Trance
Floyd Skloot
Floyd Skloot is revealed again as a poet of strong narrative and formal command, best when imaging the myth and history of the almost modern artists and aristocracy of the 19th and early 20th century.
Days
Hank Lazer
In his latest collection of poems, a series of ten-line poems written almost daily over the course of a year, Lazer once again pushes the boundaries of genre.
And Things Happen for the First Time
Iztok Osojnik
Author of more than 16 books, Slovenian poet Iztok Osojnik writes imagistic poems that develop a direct vision of life's ironies, paradoxes, and contradictions.
FICTION
When Eve Was Naked
Josef Skvorecky
Approaching 70, with nearly 20 books behind him, this Czech dissident and émigré publisher has been telling the story of his life through his characters for more than four decades.
Iceland
Jim Krusoe
Krusoe's first novel delights in the surreal, "the bloated, spongy butterflies of lungs, the shy parenthesis of kidneys, the lurid exclamation marks of livers, the cheerful blimps of stomach..."
Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!
Kenzaburo Oe
A perfect introduction to this Nobel Prize-winning Japanese author's sometimes bizarre but always humanist fiction, Rouse Up follows the story of K who uses passages of Blake's poetry to teach his severely retarded son about life and death.
Ghost of a Flea
James Sallis
Hardboiled detective and washed up writer Lew Griffin becomes embroiled in a series of mysteries, the greatest of which is the question: What happened to his life?
False Positive
Harold Jaffe
Each "story" in this new collection is a newspaper article that Jaffe has "treated," which is to say, blasted, uncovered, ruptured, expanded, exposed, scrutinized, and/or fictionalized to reveal an often insidious subtext.
Burning the Sea
Sarah Pemberton Strong
In this debut novel, Strong explores the idea that all politics originate in the physical and personal body.
NON-FICTION
Digital Poetics
The Making of E-Poetries
Loss Pequeño Glazier
The standard definition of hypertext has grown too narrow, but a "useful definition of e-writing" may not be so desirable.
The Long Prison Journey of Leslie Van Houten
Karlene Faith
Recently denied parole, Van Houten continues to pay her debt to society. Learn more about her involvement with the Manson murder spree and what she did, or rather did not, do.
East Toward Dawn
Nan Watkins
Unafraid of any new adventure, Watkins shares her extreme experiences in this part memoir/part travel journel.
Everything You Know Is Wrong
The Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Lies
edited by Russ Kick
Buckle your seat belt for a high speed ride into the land of occultism, conspiracy theory, deviant sexuality, and government wrongdoing-a.k.a. the good old U. S. of A.
Our Posthuman Future
Francis Fukuyama
Biotechnology has trumped philosophy, and scattershot experiments with the stuff of life are now driving history. With natural law no longer being debated but rewritten, can Fukuyama handle the pressure?