For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Here’s an awkward secret: I began writing criticism only five years ago. Only five years prior, after a significant life change, I fully committed to in-depth study of American poetry, not through traditional academia, but via a popular massive open online course called Modern & Contemporary American Poetry. In short, I’m an imposter. I’m … Read more
[ad_1] Born in South Korea, raised in Peru, and currently living in the United States, Ae Hee Lee is a citizen of the world, and of the word; and that’s reflected in Asterism, which was selected by the esteemed John Murillo for the 2022 Dorset Prize. It’s indicative of the collection that an asterism is … Read more
[ad_1] Where are your roots? How does language—that which you speak and that which speaks through you, if not literally then ancestrally—shift your identity and place in the world at large, and in your own community? Diego Báez’s collection Yaguareté White is an assured and intelligent debut that is lyrical and powerful, sharply examining such … Read more
[ad_1] Sigrid Nunez’s ninth novel, The Vulnerables, uses the 2020 pandemic as an inciting incident for an examination of the uncertainties and vulnerabilities that we experience during catastrophes as well as in our quotidian lives. The narrative is deceptively simple: a professor offers her apartment to a healthcare worker during the early days of the … Read more
[ad_1] Mary Jo Bang’s acclaimed translation of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno starts with this unforgettable verse: “Stopped mid-motion in the middle / Of what we call our life, I looked up and saw no sky—Only / a dense cage of leaf, tree, and twig. I was lost.” As I am “mid-motion in the middle” of my … Read more
[ad_1] Annelyse Gelman’s curiosity and passion for language, multi-disciplinary collaboration, and experimentation imbue all her projects. Two of them—her new full-length poem, Vexations, and website Midst—also prove her fascination with craft and process. In our free-ranging conversation—encompassing poems as objects, durational art, text scores, endless beginnings and endings, and generative collaborations—Gelman’s enthusiasms are front and … Read more
[ad_1] Full disclosure first: I worked with Jen St. Jude at Chicago Review of Books for a number of years. Like many of the creative professionals here, I knew they were at work on a book though I didn’t know many of the details. Reading If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come first offers the pleasure of seeing … Read more
[ad_1] In celebration of National Poetry Month, we have initiated a new regular series to highlight poets and what they are reading. For this first list, we asked some of our favorite poets to offer a brief commentary about a recent collection they thought deserved more recognition. This is the literary-equivalent of Sophie’s Choice, yet, naturally, … Read more
[ad_1] A list of Patricia Smith’s achievements in poetry could take up much of this interview. A poet, playwright, essayist, educator and mentor, she’s deservedly won nearly every accolade and award, including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement, and earlier this year she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. … Read more
[ad_1] Year-end features typically focus on “bests,” a consideration that I shy away from, perhaps a scarred memory of always being picked last for dodgeball. Because many hundreds of books are published each year, most are only very briefly in the spotlight. That always feels so inherently unfair, like having one shot at getting a … Read more