To Revive the Lyric: Hoa Nguyen

From the technology of printing to the economy of grants and the politics of academia, literary culture exists in complete continuity with the rest of contemporary society. It is susceptible to the same virtues, biases, limitations,…

Paradise on Earth: T. J. Jarrett’s Zion

There is a body at the center of Zion, T. J. Jarrett’s new collection of poems, winner of the 2013 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry open competition. To whom this…

A Ringing Echo: The Poetry of Caitlin Doyle

Caitlin Doyle’s poems are not always what they appear to be, and this subtle shape-shifting quality is exactly what makes them so revelatory. As poet and critic Abriana Jette has…

The Glam and the Gloom: Cynthia Cruz’s Wunderkammer

Cynthia Cruz is in the midst of producing an important body of work. Wunderkammer is as much installation art as it is a book of poems, or it is as…

Sources: Scholastique Mukasonga’s Our Lady of the Nile

In July, I travelled to Accra, Ghana for my sister’s engagement. Walking through my aunt’s one-story house, I searched the rooms for novelty and familiarity. So much had changed. Walls…

Text Within the Text: Rachel Blau DuPlessis

So I dismantled it. Mounted it and then dismantled it but its uncanniness its Nessie in Loch Ness-ness lurks and snuffles and sways. —Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Ledger 1 Rachel Blau DuPlessis’…

Settlement: Bich Minh Nguyen’s Pioneer Girl

It’s no accident that the hardcover design of Bich Minh Nguyen’s Pioneer Girl evokes Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House On The Prairie books. The font is large like a children’s book; the dust-jacket made…

A Reluctance to Cede Ground: Age and the Writing Life

“…so blow a kiss to this drowned world. The gods have spoken: yield.” —Maxine Kumin, “Going Down” In her introduction to A Story Larger Than My Own: Women Writers Look…

The Previous Everyday: Nicola Griffith’s Hild

In Reading in Detail: Aesthetics and the Feminine, Naomi Schor explores the connection between detail and female identity in art and literature. Schor argues that detail can be threatening in its…

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