Raymond Federman, Letters to Poets, Alan Moore and more...

INTERVIEW

Raymond Federman: An Inner-view
Interviewed by David Moscovich
"Being in the same room with Raymond Federman is a lot like reading one of his books—sprinkled with double-dashes, at times conspicuously free of punctuation."

FEATURES

Letters to Poets: Conversations About Poetics, Politics, and Community
Letters anthologized by Dana Teen Lomax and Jennifer Firestone
Rain Taxi presents the first exchanges between two poet pairs: Anselm Berrigan and John Yau, and Truong Tran and Wanda Coleman.

REVIEWS: POETRY

An Earth of Time
Jean Grosjean
translated by Keith Waldrop
Grosjean, a Roman Catholic priest who wrote this book while incarcerated in a Nazi stalag during World War II, struggled with religion and his personal relationship to God. Reviewed by Mark Tursi

America (A Poem)
John Kinsella
Australian poet Kinsella takes on America from an immigrant's point of view, wrestling with capitalism, identity, and opportunity. Reviewed by Julia Istomina

Cole Porter: Selected Lyrics
Edited by Robert Kimball
Even educated fleas recognize Cole Porter as a ubiquitous presence in American culture. Now the Library of America has assembled a selection of his lyrics. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

Post Bling Bling
Eileen Tabios
In her new collection, Tabios investigates marketing culture through found and shared language in tightly defined moments. Reviewed by by Garin Cycholl

REVIEWS: FICTION

Panda Diaries
Alex Kuo
A quixotic novel, Panda Diaries is a political self-examination of China that includes a mail-delivering panda bear and an alienated government official. Reviewed by Lucas Klein

Zed
Elizabeth McClung
In this engagingly hellish first book, McClung paints a post-apocalyptic world in which the protagonist survives by trading everything from toasters to drugs to information. Reviewed by Rod Smith

Passion
Brane Mozetič
translated by Tamara Soban
Mozetic avoids writing about the kind of sanitized homosexuals like those on TV's Will and Grace, lending a disquieting air to this collection of sketches about passion. Reviewed by Robert Murray Davis

Sex, Blood and Rock 'n' Roll
Kimberly Warner-Cohen
A normal (by East Village standards) young woman becomes increasingly haunted by dreams of murdering men in this disturbing novel. Reviewed by Tim W. Brown

REVIEWS: NONFICTION

The Shape of Things To Come: Prophecy and the American Voice
Greil Marcus
This diffuse, frustrating, and occasionally brilliant book continues in the vein of cultural criticism that Greil Marcus has made his own over the last thirty years. Reviewed by Michael Lindgren

Essential Muir: A Selection of John Muir's Best Writing
Edited by Fred D. White
A useful sampler from a much larger oeuvre, this selection picks the best of this naturalist's reveries on foliage and fauna. Reviewed by Spencer Dew

Transgender Rights
Edited by Paisley Currah, Richard M. Juang, and Shannon Price Minter
These essays mix a sad and angry acknowledgment of the difficulties facing transgender people with an optimism born from experiencing real progress over the past decade. Reviewed by Matthew Cheney

REVIEWS: GRAPHIC NOVELS

It's no secret that comics aren't just for kids anymore, but we present here two reviews of graphic novels that are for adults ONLY.

Lost Girls
Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie
Continuing to set the bar high for graphic novels, Moore and co-conspirator Gebbie set out to create a pornographic work that rewrites three treasured icons of children's literature. Reviewed by Eric Lorberer

Sticky
Dale Lazarov and Steve MacIsaac
& In Bed with David and Jonathan
Tom Bouden
Two homo-erotic graphic novels will suck you in but good. Reviewed by Jay Besemer