Check back as we add more features and reviews in the next months!

Interviews

Stop, Look, and Listen: An Interview with Rae Armantrout
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Rae Armantrout talks about breaking “out of the evangelical cage” as well as the process of writing Finalists and topics from censorship to grandparenting. Interviewed by David Moscovich

Archival Woman: An Interview with Sarah Heady
In her new book Comfort, Sarah Heady offers a refreshing new history of American women and the world surrounding them; the result illuminates not only the past, but our own tremulous moment. Interviewed by Greg Bem

A Wild Vitality: An Interview with Jerome Sala
Poet Jerome Sala discusses satirizing the corporate content machine, his Chicago art and performance influences, looking for culture in the branding of everyday objects, and his new collection How Much. Interviewed by Jim Feast

Features

Three New Publishers' Self-Retrospectives
Anthologies like these have critical value because they portray what publishers think they have achieved — and thus how they wish to be remembered. Reviewed by Richard Kostelanetz

George Mackay Brown: An Appreciation
A virtuoso with words, the prolific Scottish poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright, and essayist George Mackay Brown remains too little known in literary circles. Essay by Mike Dillon

Two New Translations of Max Jacob’s Poetry
These new translations of two of Max Jacob’s major collections should be recognized as welcome and essential. Reviewed by Patrick James Dunagan        

Poetry Reviews

Alive at the End of the World
Saeed Jones
Alive at the End of the World is the work of a maturing poet, and perhaps a transitional work: the already-accomplished Saeed Jones has moved from the subject of his boyhood to the volatile racist politics of the here and now, as well as his worries for the future. Reviewed by Walter Holland

psalmbook
Laura Walker
In her new book, Laura Walker manages to preserve a sense of prayer while also reshaping the psalm into something new—a significant literary achievement. Reviewed by John Bradley

How to Communicate
John Lee Clark
John Lee Clark hasn’t just put his life into verse and prose poems; he’s felt and manipulated and explored and expanded what poetry in English can do. Reviewed by Stephanie Burt

Water Has Many Colors
Kiriti Sengupta
Illustrated by Rochishnu Sanyal
From epics to succinct one-liners, Kiriti Sengupta suits his poetic form to the subject, just as the titular folk idiom reminds us that water takes shape from the container in which it is held. Reviewed by Malashri Lal

Nonfiction Reviews

Watershed: Attending to Body and Earth in Distress
Ranae Lenor Hanson
Ranae Lenor Hanson offers a personal map against which readers might chart their own ways through the uneasy waters of the climate crisis. Reviewed by Elizabeth Bailey

Tuesdays in Jail: What I Learned Teaching Journaling to Inmates
Tina Welling
These reflections on teaching by novelist Tina Welling, which include non-judgmental sketches of her incarcerated students, make for a beautifully written memoir. Reviewed by George Longenecker

I Need to Tell You
Cathryn Vogeley
In a memoir that details moving from the solitude of shame to the loving acceptance of family, Cathryn Vogeley also offers an enlightening examination of secret adoptions.  Reviewed by Sandra Eliason

Fiction Reviews

The Last Days of Terranova
Manuel Rivas
Translated by Jacob Rogers
The Last Days of Terranova is like a bookstore: One is pleasantly overwhelmed by the many rich stories that sit near one another. Reviewed by John Kazanjian   

Because I Loved You
Donnaldson Brown
Because I Loved You presents an adult assessment of the limits of love alongside a potent acknowledgment of the power of shared history. Reviewed by Eleanor J. Bader

Participation
Anna Moschovakis
As she does in her poetry, Anna Moschovakis effectively employs and interrogates language in her latest novel, Participation. Reviewed by Joseph Houlihan

Multi-Genre Reviews

I Made An Accident
Kevin Sampsell
Just as collage allows one to reorder the universe, poetry uses language to forge or reconstitute personal connections that may have been lost or rendered remote. Reviewed by Christopher Luna

Young Adult Fiction Reviews

Blaine for the Win
Robbie Couch
As depictions of queer characters become increasingly nuanced in YA fiction, Blaine for the Win will garner readers’ votes. Reviewed by Nick Havey

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INTERVIEWS

Christine Sneed: Please Be Advised  |  by Justin Courter
Zack Kopp: A Guide to Happiness, Aliens, False Spiritualism, Brain Drugs, and Punk  |  by Hillary Leftwich

ESSAYS

Grand Prix: A Memory of Russell Banks  |  by Madison Smartt Bell
James Weldon Johnson: The Poet-Bureaucrat  |  by Richard Kostelanetz

FEATURES

If and Only If  |  by Scott F. Parker
The New Life  |  a comic by Gary Sullivan

PLUS: cover art by David Amdur

FICTION REVIEWS

Headless World or The Problem of Time  |  Ascher/Straus  |  by Alvin Lu
Ex-Members  |  Tobias Carroll  |  by Jesi Buell
The Beloved of the Dawn  |  Franz Fühmann  |  by Greg Bem
Revenge of the Scapegoat  |  Caren Beilin  |  by Zoe Berkovitz
It Falls Gently All Around  |  Ramona Reeves  |  by Nick Hilbourn
Brother Alive  |  Zain Khalid  |  by Brian Watson
At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf  |  Tara Ison  |  by Eleanor J. Bader
No Excuses  |  Stephen L. Harris  |  by George Longenecker

NONFICTION / ART REVIEWS

The Cricket: Black Music in Evolution, 1968–69  |  by Chris Funkhouser
Under My Bed and Other Essays  |  Jody Keisner  |  by Sandra Hager Eliason
We’re Not OK: Black Faculty Experiences and Higher Education Strategies  |  Antija M. Allen and Justin T. Stewart, eds.  |  by George Longenecker
Groundglass  |  Kathryn Savage  |  by Evan Youngs
The Literary Mafia: Jews, Publishing, and Postwar American Literature  |  Josh Lambert  |  by Richard Kostelanetz
The Dylan Tapes: Friends, Players, and Lovers Talkin’ Early Bob Dylan  |  Anthony Scaduto  |  by Scott F. Parker
A Horse At Night: On Writing  |  Amina Cain  |  by Garin Cycholl
Joe Brainard: The Art of the Personal  |  John Yau  |  by W. C. Bamberger

POETRY REVIEWS

[To] The Last [Be] Human  |  Jorie Graham  |  by Walter Holland
How To Communicate  |  John Lee Clark  |  by Stephanie Burt
O  |  Zeina Hashem Beck  |  by Tara Ballard
Summer  |  Johannes Göransson  |  by K. Blasco Solér
The Collected Poems  |  Marguerite Young  |  by Zachary Tanner
The Sky Watched: Poems of Ojibwe Lives  |  Linda LeGarde Grover  |  by Warren Woessner
Translation of the Lilies Back Into Lists  |  Laynie Brown  |  by John Bradley
No Farther Than the End of the Street  |  Benjamin Niespodziany  |  by Justin Lacour
Damage  |  Mark Scroggins  |  by Joe Safdie

COMICS REVIEWS

Regarding the Matter of Oswald’s Body  |  Christopher Cantwell and Luca Casalanguida  |  by Chris Barsanti

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Even before the pandemic, our culture was beset with isolation and conflict. In reaction, I have chosen to use my art to reach out to my community by depicting people coming together through music, art, festivals and social justice actions.

This painting represents the MayDay Parade, a community celebration which was organized annually for 45 years in South Minneapolis  by the In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre. Each April (before the pandemic), the community was invited to create hand-built puppets and masks for the parade— some over 15 feet tall. On the first Sunday of May, more than 50,000 diverse participants and spectators filed the streets in this celebration of local culture. 

—David Amdur

John Freeman
Copper Canyon Press ($17)

by Joanna Acevedo

John Freeman’s third collection of poetry, Wind, Trees, has Freeman’s characteristic quietness: an understated, restrained quality which lends itself particularly well to post-pandemic writing. As a follow up to 2017’s Maps and 2020’s The Park, both also from Copper Canyon Press, Wind, Trees has a similarly dedicated focus; it is split into two sections, “Wind” and “Trees,” each of which have their own tone and point of view. Through exploration of form, repetition of ideas, and meandering of thought, the collection quietly stirs up issues of loss, friendship and partnership, and how to coexist in this dark yet brave new world.

Freeman is at his sharpest when he’s working with narrative—like in “Boxing,” one of the earliest poems of the collection, when the speaker tells the story of Carla, his sparring partner in London:

                                               What, I don’t
work you hard enough? she said once,
catching me outside, still sweaty
in my trainers, then ran
me until I puked. What do you
want, she asked. Are you here
to hurt someone? We can do
that.

Many of the poems tell stories, and these are the most successful; they allow a window into the poet’s life and are more engaging than the more abstract poems, which tend to blur together. That’s not to say there aren’t some beautiful lines in the more enigmatic poems—there certainly are, and Freeman has a knack for distilling an observation about life or pain into a pithy one-liner—but the narrative poems have a true sense of grit to them.

As for the collection’s understated title, Wind, Trees does in fact elicit a sense of the wind in the trees—the sonic sense is very strong, and Freeman puts lines together masterfully, playing often with internal rhyme and meter. In “The Heat Is Coming,” he brings this sonic play to a high level, with lines that rhyme and break and rhyme again:

The ocean is dying but we’re dying of
thirst, the power grid over Paris just burst,
they think it’s hackers from Novosibirsk . . .

This has a humorous effect, but the theme of the poem is grave. The juxtaposition of humor and significance is one that appears throughout the collection, and often to great success. At other times, Freeman turns tender; in “Nothing To Declare,” he writes:

What kind of heaven
would it be if I
couldn’t take you

This poem emerges as the heart of the collection: For all the stories told, jokes made, and fears shared and overcome, the answer to all these big questions is love. It is a redemptive mission, and one that has been hard-fought. In this way, Wind, Trees is a meditation on not only loss, but also love, and the way that although love can cause us pain, it can also heal even the deepest of wounds. We are not alone, Freeman argues. And perhaps we never were. Wind, Trees is a fascinating exploration not only of pandemic loneliness, but of the ways we begin to cope with our own isolation and process loss. The collection comes at the perfect time; as a society, we are starting to heal, and poetry such as thismay be able to help those who are looking for ways to face their isolation and get better.

Click here to purchase this book at your local independent bookstore:

Rain Taxi Online Edition Winter 2022-2023 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 2023

Maya Marshall
Haymarket Books ($17)

by Rachel Slotnick

Maya Marshall does not mince words in All the Blood Involved in Love, her debut poetry collection. Twitter declares #believewomen and #sayhername, and Marshall claps back, “Down the maternity halls black women are dying.” Reading this book is like looking through a kaleidoscope at a cross section of violence: the violence of motherhood, the violence of race, the violence of illness, and of course, the violence of love.

Marshall begins by calling out lies. Our reality is a fiction, she declares: “The story is that there is so much loss, // so much waste in a woman who does not make // a body with her body // . . . // The story is that the black woman is safe.” In the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson, the news cycles have washed their hands of the residue of intersectional progress, and Marshall leans in: “I have the good fortune to be free: / to choose, / to have part of my cervix intact, // to change the locks after / I’m attacked.” Through the suspense of enjambment, she addresses the horrific historical use of hysterectomy. She also implicates its continued contemporary use with references to Dawn Wooten, the detention center nurse who came forward regarding the forced sterilization of immigrants at the border.

The pain of both having and not having circumvents the collection. In a poem titled, “An Abortion Ban,” Marshall weaves together the inequities of gender, race, and longing: “Semen is an innocent bystander. / Penises are just boys being.” The narrative splinters as the kaleidoscope turns. We move from logic and sequential design to metaphorical and abstract figures: “An embryo is a fingernail. / A fetus is a jail,” followed by “A uterus is a leash. / A stillbirth is a tether.” The synthesis of her words is unavoidable: whether a woman becomes a mother or not, she is imprisoned.

With each new atrocity, Marshall’s words build intimacy. Many stanzas are confessional in nature; they are loveless letters. They were drafted and stamped, but never sent: “He thinks we understand each / other because of his illness / and my blackness, / but my blackness / does not make me sick.” In weighing pain and adversity against heartbreak, the reader feels like a voyeur, spying on a woman who is hemorrhaging words. Marshall laments: “Our two bodies empty / of bodies. A friend and a widow on the shore.” Even before the violence of illness comes to fruition, a loss has taken place, and before that loss another loss, and before that another.

Between personal asides, Marshall ruminates on the implications of choices for women of color. She sometimes speaks with regret: “When I remember the man that I wanted to marry but couldn’t, / I think about the children we didn’t have. // My fibroids would have made room.” Fibroids affect nearly a quarter of young black women, and by mentioning the ailment, Marshall underscores the pain of motherhood with the ache of marginalization. She asks of an unnamed man in the text, “why he doesn’t walk on lit major streets. / He says he is afraid to be outside in his body. // In a museum, a white woman reaches for me // tells me she’s never thought / of black men being afraid.” Marshall seems to be asking, Where do we go from here?

The cumulative effect is that the distinction between forms of violence is narrowed. Moving from same sex desire to childbirth, Marshall writes of “the stretch marks that surround the /exit wound.” In so few words, she likens childbirth to gun violence. Elsewhere she equates queer love and viciousness: “I looked into the open cleft of a lover and watched / the month’s first rivulet descend as she called / on my tongue’s continued praise.” In other words, to love is to bleed and to make bleed.

In this collection, Marshall doesn’t lean on irony or falsehoods; she tells it like it is, unafraid of poetry that doesn’t sound like poetry. Perhaps this is most astutely demonstrated by her shrewd dedication: “To mothers, especially mine. And to those who choose not to.”

Click here to purchase this book at your local independent bookstore:

Rain Taxi Online Edition Winter 2022-2023 | © Rain Taxi, Inc. 2023