INTERVIEWS

Sleep is More Than Mystery: An Interview with Ralph Adamo
Interviewed by Paul Dean
New Orleans poet Ralph Adamo discusses his new book, Ever, and his connections with Lost Roads press and Frank Stanford, and the mysteries of place and time.

Poptimism vs. Rockism: An Interview with Eric Weisbard
Interviewed by Dylan Hicks
Music critic Eric Weisbard discusses his inventively researched and subtly argued new book, which looks at postwar popular music through the formats radio programmers and record companies developed to present it.

Feeding on The Sea-God’s Herb: An Interview with John Domini
Interviewed by Linda Lappin
Join the conversation about John Domini’s new collection of essays, which celebrates and defines post-modernism in the novel from a fiction writer’s point of view.

FEATURES

A Night Made of Many Many Roses
A review-essay of Roses: The Late French Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated and with essays by David Need; Illustrated by Clare Johnson
Essay by Sumita Chakraborty
What started out as a routine review takes a turn for the personal as Chakraborty reads the poems of Rilke in the light of her younger sister’s death. Read this riveting review-essay as a PDF here.

FICTION REVIEWS

Outline
Rachel Cusk
In Cusk’s neatly structured novel, a nearly anonymous female narrator converses with a series of loquacious interlocutors, mostly male strangers during a trip to Athens, Greece. Reviewed By Sally Franson

My Documents
Alejandro Zambra
My Documents collects an array of meditations on writing and wayward memories of growing up in Chile. Reviewed by Jeff Alford

Baal
Joseph Harms
Baal reworks the familiar story of two youths on the cusp of adolescence who discover that while Satanic evil is real, human evil is even worse. Reviewed by Jane Franklin

The Turner House
Angela Flournoy
Flournoy’s debut novel is a thoroughly engrossing saga that spans more than a half-century in the lives of an African American family in Detroit. Reviewed by by Rob Kirby

Against the Country
Ben Metcalf
Metcalf recounts a family’s journey to Goochland County, VA, an idealized pastoral land that harbors a dark side. Reviewed by Garin Cycholl

Jillian
Halle Butler
Butler’s debut novel taps into a frightening display of dysfunction and assholery. Reviewed by Courtney Becks

Because the Night
Stacy Hardy
Hardy’s first collection of stories is part book, part art object, an uncanny collaboration between the author and Italian photographer Mario Pischedda. Reviewed by Noy Holland

She Weeps Each Time You’re Born
Quan Barry
Poet Quan Barry turns to prose to relate the mythic tale of Rabbit, a Vietnamese psychic. Reviewed by Benjamin Hankey

POETRY REVIEWS

What About This: Collected Poems Of Frank Stanford
Frank Stanford
Thirty-seven years after his death, the long-awaited Collected gathers not only all of Frank Stanford's published poetry, but unpublished poems, prose, and more. Reviewed by John Bradley

Drift
Caroline Bergvall
Bergvall’s compelling Drift explores how the poetic process has an impact on cultural excavation. Reviewed by Greg Bem

Holy Heathen Rhapsody
Pattiann Rogers
In Rogers’s latest in over a dozen collections of poetry, her voice is at once enchantingly sophisticated while maintaining a tenderfoot, almost toddler-like, lens. Reviewed by Kimberly Burwick

Eelahroo (Long Ago) Nyah (Looking) Mobo-Mobo (Future)
Lionel G. Fogarty
While the indigenous Australian writer can be seen as writing with a double consciousness, this new work demands a new analysis. Reviewed by Robert Wood

Antisocial Patience
David Brazil
Brazil offers a a series of meditations on the dilemma of works and grace, praxis and chance, for the “defeated” but righteous crusader-cum-activist. Reviewed by Tyrone Williams

The Ghost In Us Was Multiplying
Brent Armendinger
Armendinger uses all the vexations of language to access the inaccessible. Reviewed by J.G. McClure

Two Tragedies in 429 Breaths
Susan Paddon
Paddon’s new collection creates what T. S. Eliot would call a “new whole” out of her reading of Anton Chekhov and the experience of her mother’s last months of life. Reviewed by Joseph Ballan

Soldier On
Gale Marie Thompson
In her first full-length collection, Thompson language is just stubborn enough to cohere, just disjointed enough to take on the characteristics of a delicate but indelible lace. Reviewed by Jenny E. Drai

Picasso’s Tears
Wong May
This long-awaited fourth collection of poems reveals a deft examination of events, from Mozart to 9/11. Reviewed by Daniel Moysaenko

Continuous Performance: The Selected Poems of Maggie Jaffe
Edited by Christopher Butters, Marilyn Zuckerman, and Robert Edwards
A new selection of Maggie Jaffe’s poetry displays her distinctive, tough-edged voice—a poet not for the squeamish. Reviewed By Julia Stein

NONFICTION REVIEWS

Ardor
Roberto Calasso
Calasso draws upon The Vedas to reveal an intricate network of complicated rituals, mythological characters, and metaphysical enigmas—all of which are merely different means of describing how the mind and the cosmos interrelate. Reviewed by John Toren

Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording
David Grubbs
Grubbs takes a long look at changes in how music has been conceived, written, performed, and recorded in light of the passage of time and development of new technologies related to the listening experience. Reviewed by Will Wlizlo

The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia
Michael Booth
Booth performs a journalistic tightrope walk between his grudging admiration of the Nordic countries and delight in debunking their virtues. Reviewed by Poul Houe

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
Bryan Stevenson
Just Mercy is a compelling narrative on the themes of economic and racial bias, illustrated with stories of people who live on the margins of the U.S. legal system. Reviewed By George Longenecker

Girl in a Band
Kim Gordon
Kim Gordon’s memoir picks up where Patti Smith’s Just Kids ends, with the next generation of artists who were inspired by the addictive energy of New York City. Reviewed by Christopher Luna

The Night Sky: Soul and Cosmos
Richard Grossinger
This ambitious, massive tome culls together three texts spanning decades, all focused on merging the science and history of astronomy with the cosmically attuned insights of astrology. Reviewed by Patrick James Dunagan

Chicago Social Practice History Series
Edited by Mary Jane Jacob and Kate Zeller
Two books, Immersive Life Practices and Support Networks, explore the relationship of Chicago-centered artists to the global social practice community. Reviewed by Jay Besemer