For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Nikki Giovanni—one of the great poets of any generation—still has much to impart in Make Me Rain, her hybrid autobiography of poems and prose. Given the tumultuous aspects of 2020, the disruptions and dislocations of quotidian and public life, there’s a refreshing discordance in reading Giovanni’s newest and especially personal collection. Throughout the book, … Read more
[ad_1] Antonin Artaud was one of the foundational voices in establishing the modern avant garde. His famous writings on The Theater and Its Double, and Theatre of Cruelty, place him alongside Breton and Brecht in creating the contemporary understanding of avant-garde practice. This new collection, Artaud the Mômo, draws from his last period of writing, … Read more
[ad_1] The many hauntings of a mother’s body coalesce in Hinge, a new poetry collection by Molly Spencer. With stories ranging from the ancient myths of Persephone and Demeter to the modern folklore of Peter Pan, Hinge examines a girl’s dreams alongside a mother’s fears. In Spencer’s poetry, pain is chronic in the body, persistent … Read more
[ad_1] This Virtual Night returns us to “The Outworlds,” C.S. Friedman’s quietly intriguing science-fictional universe. The world Friedman painted in 1998’s This Alien Shore, a cyberpunk-flavored space adventure, felt ahead of its time: entire cultures built around physical and mental diversity, with strange and evocative embellishments. In this future, humanity settled distant planets using a … Read more
[ad_1] Marc Kelly Smith, nicknamed “Slam Papi,” founded international slam poetry in the 1980s when he started the monumental Uptown Poetry Slam series at the Green Mill. Each Sunday night, he attracted misfits and poets from across Chicago and its suburbs to exchange words, including the likes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Patricia Smith, who provides … Read more
[ad_1] Deep in the forests of eastern Poland, the town of Kreskol lies forgotten. Through an improbable combination of bureaucratic negligence, unfriendly relations with other Jewish towns, and favorable geography, the Jews of Kreskol — the world’s last shtetl — have escaped the great onslaughts of the twentieth century (the Great War; the Holocaust; Polish … Read more
[ad_1] “It is poetry that holds the songs of becoming, of change, of dreaming, and it is poetry we turn to when we travel those places of transformation, like birth, coming of age, marriage, accomplishments, and death. We sing our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren: our human experience in time, into and through existence.” So begins the … Read more
[ad_1] Society is one of these concepts we might fail to adequately define, but we all know what it means. Ironically, even more universal than this implicit understanding is the feeling that one just does not belong. This is certainly a feeling familiar to Sayaka Murata, and it’ll be familiar to readers of her first … Read more
[ad_1] For the fifth year in a row, the Chicago Review of Books is thrilled to present the CHIRBy Awards to recognize the best fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and short essays published by Chicago-based writers. Below are the finalists in each category for 2020, along with a list of this year’s judges. Congratulations to all of these incredible writers! … Read more
[ad_1] I’m tempted to say the modern idea of genre is a joke, except that it’s not funny. A sincerely curious, skilled, and committed writer can basically write whatever she wants, genre be damned. Yet certain genres are still elevated and others dismissed; the New York Times “By the Book” feature still regularly asks writers … Read more