Reviews
Or Consequence by Cynthia Hogue (Red Hen, 2010)
Fifteen people, mostly women, were gathered in a hotel conference room in Victoria, British Columbia — one of those grand old buildings where the wireless doesn’t work and photographs of Queen Elizabeth adorn the lobby. The space was cramped and … Continue reading
American Rendering by Andrew Hudgins (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010)
What do we make these days of the term “Southern Gothic”? Has it only become a way to promote an author, as in the way the dust jacket of Andrew Hudgins’s new and selected poems, American Rendering, flaunts that Hudgins … Continue reading
What is Owed the Dead By R.H.W. Dillard (Factory Hollow Press, 2011)
R.H.W. Dillard’s seventh collection of verse, What Is Owed the Dead, includes five poems that previously appeared in the pages of this magazine and manages to offer a unique breadth and depth of literary scope, primarily through its focus on a wide … Continue reading
Every Riven Thing by Christian Wiman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)
LANDSCAPE FOR GRIEF Christian Wiman’s exploration of grief and faith in Every Riven Thing, his third poetry collection, will not satisfy readers expecting either easy access or a sense of closure. The literary and thematic connections with Wiman’s first two … Continue reading
The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai (Viking Press, 2011)
The concept of revolution is formed around and nuanced by abstract conceptions of change, of emotion, and of hope. Providing a succinct definition for such an intangible idea is a near impossible task. What makes a revolution? And, maybe more … Continue reading