The Beds Poems by Martha Rhodes Autumn House Press, 2012 $14.95 In her fourth collection of poems, Martha Rhodes examines illness, love, the infidelity of the body, and “The pleasures and inconveniences of being detested.” This, the title of the twelfth poem in her collection The Beds, begins with frailty, meanders through the doctor’s …
One of the great joys and struggles in writing fiction is the process of developing characters. The word here is, indeed, “developing” and not “creating.” Many fictitious character are an assemblage of parts: a boss’s arrogance here, a neighbor’s laziness there—and in Party Girls, Diane Goodman’s 2011 collection of short stories, the delicate crafting and …
To read Peter Blair’s Farang is to find oneself in a lucid dream. Set in Thailand and wavering between Bangkok, the “Up-country” and Pittsburgh, Blair’s language moves readers through scenes with the elegance of a foreign dancer: the rhythms are mesmerizing, the experience transcendent. Having spent three years in Thailand in the Peace Corps, Blair …