What We’re Reading: Fossils in the Making by Kristin George Bagdanov
In Kristin George Bagdanov’s debut full-length poetry collection Fossils in the Making (Black Ocean, 2019) it is no coincidence that “gyre” rhymes with “lyre.”
What We’re Reading
What We’re Reading: To Float in the Space Between by Terrance Hayes
Making a case for what he terms “liquid poetics,” Hayes suggests that great art comes from the ability to stay loose, to change tacks, to shape shift in response to these shifting, mysterious factors. Hayes’ sustained emphasis on personal poetics as both liquid and descendant creates a way for his readers (colleagues, family, fans) to find themselves within the fluctuating matrix he proposes.
What We’re Reading: Poetry Collections by Susannah Nevison and Miriam Bird Greenberg
What better way to honor National Poetry Month here at the CR than to highlight poetry collections by two of our recent contributors?
What We’re Reading: Shapes of Native Nonfiction
Editorial Assistant Emma Faesi Hudelson: Shapes of Native Nonfiction, an anthology of essays by Native authors (University of Washington Press, forthcoming in June 2019), is a formidable entry into the swelling ranks of literary nonfiction. And it’s one that the nonfiction community—mostly white, me included—needs to pay attention to. As editors Elissa Washuta and Theresa …
What We’re Reading: Daylily Called It a Dangerous Moment by Alessandra Lynch
Editorial Assistant Cara Dees: Alessandra Lynch’s third poetry collection, Daylily Called It a Dangerous Moment (Alice James Books, 2017), navigates the trauma of surviving rape, the insatiability and pervasive cruelty of rape culture, and the speaker’s search for a voice as she insists on her own survival and story, to “nearly convinc[e] myself recursiveness / …
What We’re Reading: The Taxidermist’s Cut by Rajiv Mohabir
Associate Editor Caitlin Doyle: As spring approaches and new books of poetry make their way into print, many of them by first-time authors, we’re abuzz in the CR office about debut collections from the recent past that have held us in thrall. In celebration of the season, I’m happy to highlight The Taxidermist’s Cut by …
What We’re Reading: Victoria Chang’s Barbie Chang
Editorial Assistant Chelsea Whitton: “Someone says it is difficult to write poems / that are both domestic and ambitious,” writes Victoria Chang in Barbie Chang (Copper Canyon, 2017), her fourth collection. This book rejects the implication that domestic poems—work about childbearing and rearing, about caring for one’s aging parents, about social anxiety and the link …
What We’re Reading: Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend
Just in time for the National Book Award ceremony tomorrow, we’d like to share an appreciation for one of the nominees in fiction. Editorial Assistant Matt Morgenstern: It’s difficult to summarize Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend, published earlier this year by Riverhead (and nominated for this year’s National Book Award). Dwight Garner does a good job in the …
What We’re Reading: Eléna Rivera’s Scaffolding
Editorial Assistant Ankit Basnet: Over the years, I have grown fond of reading book-length poems. And the projects that always draw me in are, unsurprisingly, sonnet sequences, often favored by contemporary American poets experimenting with poetic forms. The sonnet never goes out of vogue because it stands the test of time. Its shape is so …
What We’re Reading: Kim Kyung Ju’s I Am a Season That Does Not Exist in the World
Editorial Assistant Madeleine Wattenberg: I fell asleep halfway through reading Kim Kyung Ju’s I Am a Season That Does Not Exist in the World (Black Ocean, 2016) and dreamed that a neon pink cobra hid in my shoe and bit my big toe. I mention this both because it is not unlike what it feels like …