David Shapiro, Katherine Towler, Michael Chabon, and more...

INTERVIEWS

Pluralist Music: An Interview with David Shapiro
Interviewed by Joanna Fuhrman
With his ninth book of verse, A Burning Interior, just published, the endlessly experimental David Shapiro talks about the joys of influence and why tennis isn't poetry.

The Island Itself: An Interview with Novelist Katherine Towler
Interviewed by Felicia C. Sullivan
Katherine Towler speaks about the process of writing her debut novel Snow Island and about the difficulties facing writers in pursuing publication.

FEATURES

Hard Code
Eugene Thacker
& Cyber Reader
Neil Spiller
Essay by Rod Smith
From a vertiginously sweeping overview of cyberspace dating back to the birth of computers to an up-to-the-nanosecond "Us versus. Them" invention that Burroughs would applaud without reservation, two new books deliver different glimpses into the world of computers and their effects on contemporary (and future) culture.

REVIEWS: POETRY

Sleeping With the Dictionary
Harryette Mullen
Imagine the poet's desk as a stage where she dances in reaction to and in collaboration with her dictionary, and you may get an idea of the playful and musical virtuosity of Mullen's poetry. Reviewed by Christopher Fischbach

The Captain Lands in Paradise
Sarah Manguso
In Manguso's Paradise, it rains diamonds on Neptune, deer are everywhere, and while there are occasional (and welcome) moments of grief, mostly the book is a quiet, whimsical, ride. Reviewed by Susie Meserve

Borrowed Love Poems
John Yau
Yau's latest collection is fed on a steady diet of movies, modernism, and all manner of mercurial identity, swift perception, and modes and inventive odes of riddling otherhood. Reviewed by Tom Devaney

bk of (h)rs
Pattie McCarthy
In her first full-length collection, McCarthy joins a post-confessional focus with the still-increasing awareness that non-canonical texts from the middle ages, renaissance, and "early modern" baroque period were written, spoken, or used by women. Reviewed by Catherine Daly

Our Thang
Ted Joans
Poet Ted Joans and artist Laura Corsiglia have pooled their respective resources to create a synergistic garden of words and illustrations, a magnetic field of surrealist energies mingling lines of visual fascination with exuberant be bop quincaillerie. Reviewed by John Olson

Embargoed Voice
Milla Graffi
As part of the Italian avant-garde "poesia totale" movement, Milla Graffi's poetry has an experimental, out-on-a-limb sensibility that makes this chapbook well-worth the five spot. Reviewed by Chris Glomski

REVIEWS: NONFICTION

Lives of Mothers & Daughters: Growing Up with Alice Munro
Sheila Munro
Growing up as Alice Munro's daughter, Sheila Munro takes on the icon that is her mother, saying "What is there to do with an icon besides worshipping it, or ignoring it, or smashing it to pieces?" Reviewed by Meleah Maynard

Sitting Up With the Dead: A Storied Journey Through the American South
Pamela Petro
In Sitting Up With the Dead Pamela Petro has undertaken a Chaucer-esque pilgrimage through the American South to report on the culture and the people who preserve it through traditions of storytelling. Reviewed by Lynnell Edwards

Consider the Eel
Richard Schweid
Pity the poor American who shuns the eel as a savory meal or snack. The mystery and intrigue of eels is brought to life in the non-linear, picturesque stories of Consider the Eel. Reviewed by Allison Slavick

REVIEWS: FICTION

Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee
James Tate
In this new prose collection, Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee, every short story honks: None of the characters speak the same language, and some of the characters simply can't speak at all. Reviewed by Melissa Maerz

Summerland
Michael Chabon
Summerland is Chabon's first children's book, crafted with undeniable charm and a deep reverence for the conventions of the form-though it doesn't quite hit it out of the park. Reviewed by Stephen E. Abbott

Girl Imagined by Chance
Lance Olsen
Where does the made-up child change from concept to reality? In language, baby, language. Reviewed by Rochelle Ratner

Melymbrosia
Virginia Woolf
Published again with a new introduction by Louise DeSalvo, Melymbrosia is an early version of Virginia Woolf's first published novel, The Voyage Out (1915). Reviewed by Charise Gendron

Martylove
Gary Waterman
Told in letters, diary entries, screenplays, song lyrics, and fan-mag celebrity factsheets, Martylove revels in a frenzy of Hollywood desperation and superficial fantasy. Reviewed by Jessica Hoffmann

The Height and Depth of Everything
Katharine Haake
In these experimental short stories, Haake challenges the primacy of elements like plot and character by asserting the importance of form and structure. Reviewed by Sheila Squillante

The Far Side of Nowhere
Nelson Bond
A generous collection of 29 stories mostly written in the 1930s through '50s, Bond's The Far Side of Nowhere weds traditional science fiction tropes with American modes of fabulist fiction. Reviewed by Alan DeNiro

REVIEWS: ART

Yes Yoko Ono
Alexandra Munroe with Jon Hendricks
This interactive catalog highlights the conceptual nature of Yoko Ono's work. Munroe begins with an incisive, insightful survey that furnishes a framework necessarily pliant and permeable, as no life is ever as orderly and logical as any chronological display. Reviewed by Gary Gach

The Impact of Chaim Soutine
Maurice Tuchman and Esti Dunow
"At once a flayed man hung from a pulpy wrist and flailing, with gorgeous white wings attached to his leg stumps, and a gem-like putrescent bird, hung by one leg, in an underworld filled with bird-beaked monsters and zooming gushes of blood-colored and sky-blue paint." Read on. Reviewed by Clayton Eshleman