Mendeleev’s Mandala Poems by Jessica Goodfellow Mayapple Press, 2015 $15.95 mandala: from the Sanskrit for “circle,” a schematized representation of the cosmos chiefly characterized by a concentric configuration of geometric shapes; in common use, mandala has become a generic term for any diagram, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically; a …
The Invention of Monsters / Plays for the Theatre Poems by C. Dylan Bassett Plays Inverse, 2014 $10.00 It’s a businessman’s sadness . . . it’s getting lost on purpose. This is how I moved through C. Dylan Bassett’s collection The Invention of Monsters / Plays for the Theatre; as if I’ve chosen to walk …
The Hollow Ground by Natalie Harnett St. Martin’s Press $15.99 Praise for The Hollow Ground by Natalie Harnett is not in short supply. Some critics have even compared Harnett’s debut novel to To Kill a Mockingbird, claiming that her child protagonist, Brigid, is akin to Scout. While it is certainly true that both novels are …
Attack Theatre spent eighteen months working on their latest piece, Remainder Northside. For that year and a half, they taught creative movement at various Northside schools, after-school, and summer programs. In getting to know the youth of the neighborhood, they created an hour-long group dance that loosely shared the kids’ thoughts and experiences. Before the …
Alone of the Wall by Alex Honnold with David Roberts W.W. Norton, 2015 Hardback: $26.95 The majority of books I review are poetry, often in translation, because I came to literary criticism via my career in translation. However, I’m also an avid athlete and one of the sports I pursue is rock climbing. While it …
“The FROST performs its secret ministry.” from “Frost at Midnight” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Now, that this year’s Pittsburgh Pirates’ baseball season is finished, what I most recall are the joyous moments I experienced watching the games on the Roots Sports channel while I sat here in my condo a few hundred yards across the …
Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots Poems by Katherine Hoerth Lamar University Press, 2014 $15.00 The deities of ancient Greece are transplanted onto the Texan landscape in Katherine Hoerth’s Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots. Here, love and womanhood bud, flower, and fade on dusty back roads and along the Gulf of Mexico. Hoerth’s new mythology illustrates her speaker’s …
If You Find Yourself Poems by Brian Patrick Heston Main Street Rag, 2014 $14.00 One thing Brian Patrick Heston gets right in his collection, If You Find Yourself, is how death creeps into the lives of children. How it changes them. Heston opens on this moment of change—summer around the way, “latchkey kids” in Adidas …