NewPages Book Reviews
Posted July 1, 2010
Impotent
Novel by Matthew Roberson
Fiction Collective 2, March 2009
ISBN-10: 1573661481
ISBN-13: 978-1573661485
Paperback: 166pp; $13.95
Review by Caleb Tankersley
If you’ve ever been on a mind-melting prescription drug
binge, Matthew Roberson’s new novel Impotent might be
nostalgic for you. But for the rest of us in docile society,
this new work from Fiction Collective 2 lives up to the bizarre,
psychedelic, experimental, and well-crafted reputation of the
press’s many outer-rim publications. For example, Impotent
opens with the recurring characters L and I, in which L stands
for “Last Name, First Name, Middle Initial” and I stands for
“Insured.” . . .
[Read
full review here]
LA Liminal
Poetry by Becca Klaver
Kore Press, March 2010
ISBN-10: 1888553375
ISBN-13: 978-1-888553-37-6
Paperback: 88pp; $14.95
Review by Gina Myers
According to Merriam-Webster, liminal describes a
threshold, an in-between state; it is defined as “of, relating
to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition,” and it
is the perfect adjective to describe the state of Becca Klaver’s
poems in LA Liminal, her first full-length collection.
Prose pieces woven throughout the book present a common
narrative: a young lady from a Midwestern town moves to Los
Angeles in hope to discover whatever it is that LA promises,
grows disenchanted, and leaves . . .
[Read full review here]
Wings Without Birds
Poetry by Brian Henry
Salt Publishing, March 2010
ISBN-10: 1844717488
ISBN-13: 978-1844717484
Paperback: 66pp; $14.95
Review by Kate Angus
Wings Without Birds, the most recent collection from poet and
translator, Brian Henry, is a book that quietly and confidently
upends various conventions and expectations. The title itself is
a good map for what follows: the mind at flight, tethered but
not subservient to the earthly body. Although the speaker in
“Where We Stand Now,” the book’s long center poem, claims: "The body, my body, is what
/
I think about most. Even in my sleep /
I think about thebodymybody. / How it disappoints in every way" . . .
[Read full review here]
Isobel & Emile
Novel by Alan Reed
Coach House Books, April 2010
ISBN-10: 1552452271
ISBN-13: 978-1-55245-227-1
Paperback: 156pp; $16.95
Review by Keith Meatto
Isobel & Emile is the story of two young lovers who
separate and then try to survive on their own. The novel opens
on the morning after their final consummation. Emile boards a
train bound for his home in the city. Isobel stays in the town
where they conducted their brief affair. For each one, the pain
of separation becomes an existential crisis. After the breakup
in the prologue, Reed alternates chapters between Isobel and
Emile’s point of view, a technique that befits their separation . . .
[Read full review here]
Look Back, Look Ahead
Poetry by Srečko Kosovel
Translated from the Slovene by Ana Jelnikar and Barbara Siegel Carlson
Ugly Duckling Presse, April 2010
ISBN-10: 1933254548
ISBN-13: 978-1-933254-54-8
Paperback: 256pp; $17.00
Review by Larry O. Dean
This selected edition of Srečko Kosovel's poems, translated
from the Slovene by Ana Jelnikar and Barbara Siegel Carlson, is
a welcome addition to the developing canon of Slovenian poetry,
but more so, it's an obvious labor of love by both translators
as well as publisher. The book is perfect-bound in a simple but
eye-catching jacket from Ugly Duckling, with interior text
provided in the poet's native language as well as English on
facing pages. Additionally, there are poems reprinted in
Kosovel's own handwriting
. . .
[Read full review here]
Talk Thai
The Adventures of Buddhist Boy
Memoir by Ira Sukrungruang
University of Missouri Press, March 2010
ISBN-10: 082621889X
ISBN-13: 9780826218896
Hardcover: 168pp; $24.95
Review by Denise Hill
It seems inherent that immigration stories must revolve
around flight from a home country – due to war, political
injustice, threat of death, wretched conditions that force a
person to seek a better life, or the desire to achieve the
American Dream. There is none of this in Talk Thai.
Sukrungruang’s parents left Thailand enticed by jobs. He writes,
“Most Thai immigrants viewed America only as a workplace.
America provided jobs. America provided monetary success.
America provided opportunities Thailand couldn’t”
. . .
[Read full review here]
Immigrant
Poetry by Marcela Sulak
Black Lawrence Press, April 2010
ISBN-10: 0982622821
ISBN-13: 978-0982622827
Paperback: 55pp; $14.00
Review by Skip Renker
The cover of Immigrant reveals the high heels and
provocative bare legs of a woman peeling and eating oranges, and
indeed the book depicts sexual relationships, but there are also
fruits, domestic and exotic, countries of partisans, barbed wire
fencing in Texas, layered speech, a clear-eyed love of the
world, and dreams, too, of what’s missing. These poems, with
exact, evocative lines and phrases, summon, re-awaken, evoke, as
in the Latin vocare, to call, call forth . . .
[Read full review here]
Flowers
Poetry by Paul Killebrew
Canarium Books, April 2010
ISBN-10: 0982237626
ISBN-13: 978-0-9822376-2-5
Paperback: 75pp; $14.00
Review by Jeremy Benson
I’m a sucker for well-played formalism. Mongrel poetry;
pedigreed from sestinas and villanelles, but – some earlier
generation having snuck out the back with a scraggly beat poet –
nearly unrecognizable, with crooked teeth and fantastic, durable
hips. I like them because of the thrill received when I finally
catch on to the loose pattern half-way through the poem. It’s
partly the thrill of jealousy – how can a poet get away with
using the same word [at least] twice in the same 14 line poem? . . .
[Read full review here]
The Ancient Book of Hip
Poetry by D.W. Lichtenberg
Fourteen Hills Press, November 2009
ISBN-10: 1889292214
ISBN-13: 9-781889-292212
Paperback: 89pp; $12.00
Review by Gina Myers
In the introduction to The Ancient Book of Hip, D.W.
Lichtenberg states his purpose: “This book is a documentation, a
case study, an oral history, or whatever you want to call it.”
It attempts to document “the phenomenon of hip,” the
twenty-something trust-funders who moved to urban areas,
specifically Williamsburg, Brooklyn, at the turn of the
twenty-first century. What follows are poems that capture the
New York School sprezzetura of Frank O’Hara . . .
[Read full review here]
Selenography
Poetry by Joshua Marie Wilkinson
with Polaroids by Tim Rutili
Sidebrow Books, April 2010
ISBN 10: 0-9814975-2-7
ISBN 13: 978-0-9814975-2-5
Paperback: 103pp; $20.00
Review by Kristin Abraham
In his fifth book, Joshua Marie Wilkinson (in collaboration
with photographer Tim Rutili) presents to us Polaroid
photographs and poetry in gorgeous interplay. The text, broken
into five poems/sections with words on the verso and images on
the recto, is a fairly quick, very enjoyable read on the
surface, but beyond the surface it achieves a brilliant
complexity that haunts readers long after they put down the book . . .
[Read full review here]
Ghost Machine
Poetry by Ben Mirov
Caketrain, May 2010
Paperback: 105pp; $8.00
Review by Dan Magers
In Ben Mirov’s debut poetry collection Ghost Machine,
the overriding tension is the kinetic, non-reflective “I” (or
sometimes “Eye”) stabbing through a list of seemingly random
present-tense actions with an ADD-like attention span, overlaid
with the sense of a haunting presence (or presences), creating
the space of a temporal past. The randomness with which actions
and thoughts take place suggests a lack of agency, but as the
momentum builds it seems more that that barely-there presence is
stirring – if not driving – the action . . .
[Read full review here]
The Dream Detective
Poetry by David Mills
Straw Gate Books, 2009
ISBN-10: 0-9773786-5-9
Paperback: 84pp; $15.00
Review by Micah Zevin
If you wake up in the morning and fragments of phrases,
words, and images coalesce into a beautiful potluck of
fascinating, hilarious, and magical linguistic gymnastics that
have serious questions and answers about life at their core,
then you must be reading The Dream Detective by David
Mills. In his first collection, language is a platform for
profundity and profundity is a platform for language and its
reshaping or remolding that both regales us with its fantastic
puns, double-entendres and sexual humor . . .
[Read full review here]
The Running Waves
Novel by T.M. Murphy & Seton Murphy
PublishingWorks, May 2010
ISBN-10: 1935557556
ISBN-13: 978-1-935557-55-5
Paperback: 272pp; $15.95
Review by Elizabeth Townsend
The Running Waves is a book about two brothers
learning to come to terms with hard times in each of their
lives. The younger of the two brothers, Colin, is a 19-year-old
shoe store employee trying, unsuccessfully at first, to get past
the accident that killed his two best friends the previous year.
Dermot is the 23-year-old elder brother, home from college for
the summer. He comes home to hide for awhile from the fact that
his girlfriend, someone he thought might be “the one,” broke up
with him . . .
[Read full review here]