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] Chicago is home to an always generative arts and culture scene and is an exceptionally rich poetry town, inspiring and supporting a noteworthy group of America’s finest poets. Dr. Taylor Byas extends that lineage with her debut collection, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, which showcases an assured poet exploring weighty concepts of … Read more
[ad_1] Chicago’s inaugural Poet Laureate avery r. young is as remarkable, and multitudinous, and mesmerizing, as the city itself. His poetry is equally generative and multifaceted, and extends far beyond specific boundaries of language, music, performance, and visual art. At an essential level, young is both a remarkable individual, impassioned creator, and committed collaborator whose … Read more
[ad_1] There are books you read for knowledge, those you read for escape, those you read for enlightenment, those you read to be lost, those you read to be found, and then those you read again, and again. Is it because you want to inhabit that world? Or is it because they force you to … 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