The title, Gardening on Mars, intrigues. Will it involve intergalactic insights? A theme of cultivating plants in our challenging soils? Motifs of extraterrestrial landscapes? Not quite, as Jane Frank’s third poetry collection does take us travelling but with a substantial focus on the interconnected environments of our inner and outer worlds. It is Earth that is walked and returned to us via Frank’s rare choice of images sequenced with unexpected details.
Category: Book Reviews
Book Reviews
A review of The Shipikisha Club by Mubanga Kalimamukwento
The alternating chapters of the first part that focus on Ntashé as she attends her mother’s trial highlight the tensions between mother and daughter, as she witnesses the way her mother is changed “from the person she knew to the monster gaining color as the trial proceeds.” Though well aware of her father’s violence and drunkenness, Ntashé seems more inclined to sympathize with him than with her mother, whom she sees as a sort of bully.
A review of Keeping Room by Ann E. Wallace
Ann E. Wallace’s third book of poetry, Keeping Room, examines what it means to live with illness and beauty. And neither has strict borders in Wallace’s beautiful and haunting poems. The illnesses she addresses are not only her own, or her loved ones, but the sickness and depravity of the world we find ourselves in now.
A review of Now-Then: New and Selected Poems by Mike Ladd
Now-Then shows just how much Ladd has done and the ways in which the work has transformed and progressed over the years. His older work still feels fresh and it’s a pleasure to be able to read generous selections of multiple books in one place. His newer work is rich with a maturity that allows for the lightest touch and the deepest thought. Whether in the Bolivian Mountains, Java, driving along the Huon Highway or in an Adelaide suburb, Now-Then is full of consistently transcendent and powerful work.
A review of becalming by Aga Maksimowska
If you’ve ever wondered what happens when a third-culture kid gets into a Master of Fine Arts’ program in Canada, produces a novel, then wonders if living in Poland might be preferrable — this book ticks your boxes. The titillation is Canadian-tame, the plot aims for literary high, and there’s ice hockey culture thrown in for good measure. Millennial meets morality, with motherhood poking in to give a bit of advice.
A review of Man Ray: When Objects Dream by Stephanie D’Alessandro and Stephen C. Pinson
When Objects Dream, the catalog raisonée, the book, is a work of art in itself. It will turn your coffee table into a living museum. The reproductions are stark, practically bleeding; the organization of the book, skirting Ray’s ever-wavering lines between genre and chronology, is every bit as delicious and sumptuous — practically on a par with — a visit to the exhibit itself.
A review of Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
Tender is the Flesh shows the horrific effects of apathy. Bazterrica spares no detail. There is no breathing room, no one to hold your hand as you read the atrocities depicted in this novel. Though incredibly graphic and disturbing, Tender is the Flesh is one of the best novels I’ve read and has left a permanent impression in my mind.
A review of The Coast of Everything by Guillermo Stitch
From the get-go, Guillermo Stitch’s new novel The Coast of Everything hurls salvos of delicious sentences, voice, and prescient irony that hit the reader broadsides and leave them gasping for crawl space but wanting more. These days, reading – let alone writing – a 747-page novel is a highly transgressive, seditious, treasonous act.
A review of Tough Poets Review 02 edited by Kathleen Cullen & Rick Schober
This spirited new journal lives up to its name: solid, uncompromising and shot through with a vigorous lyricism. Tough Poets Review is an adventurous blend of diverse voices and artistic styles, a rich feast for the eye and mind. Literary journals as lively and interesting as this are rarely come by.
A review of Farhang Book Two by Patrick Woodcock
What makes Farhang Book Two such a powerful achievement is the way it unites global experience with the emotional terrain of Nunavut and the Arctic. Every remembered country and conflict passes through the stillness and isolation of the North before reaching the page. The result is a collection where geography becomes inseparable from psychology, and where memory itself behaves like tidewater beneath ice: shifting, returning, impossible to contain.