The Poetics of War: Three New Books on Armed Conflict and Armed Service reviewed by Mark Wagenaar
The Poetics of War: Three New Books on Armed Conflict and Armed Service Shrapnel Maps Philip Metres Copper Canyon Press 2020 At the heart of Philip Metres’ new book, Shrapnel Maps, is a series of wide-ranging sequences, “A Concordance of Leaves,” “Theater of Operations,” “Poster (“Visit”)
Chelsea Wagenaar reviews Paisley Rekdal’s “Nightingale”
In the opening poem of Nightingale, Paisley Rekdal writes, “The tree traffics / in a singular astonishment, its gold tongues / lolling out a song so rich and sweet, the notes / are left to rot upon the pavement.” The image of this tree in its cyclical transformation fuses many of the collection’s major themes: beauty, fecundity, violence, death. The
Mark Wagenaar reviews Mark Irwin’s “Shimmer”
Mark Irwin’s Shimmer Shimmer, the winner of the 2018 Phillip Levine Prize for Poetry, is Mark Irwin’s tenth volume of poetry, and follows 2017’s A Passion According to Green, and a selected volume from 2015, American Urn. Readers can comb through American Urn, and witness a fascinating evolution of a poet across half a dozen volumes. One of Irwin’s biggest
Richard Greenfield reviews “NOS” by Aby Kaupang and Matthew Cooperman
GNOSIS OF OTHERWISE Up until 2013, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) listed a catch-all descriptor—NOS, or “not otherwise specified”— for patients who did not fit into available and discrete psychiatric diagnoses. The APA now recommends that doctors proffer such diagnoses along with potential “specifiers” as to why a patient’s clinical condition does not
Lea Graham reviews Michael Anania’s “Nightsongs & Clamors”
IT’S ABOUT TIME This past June marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Michael Anania’s first book New Poetry Anthology (Swallow Press, 1969). This is particularly important given that his newest book of poems Nightsongs & Clamors—his nineteenth book, continues his commitment to modernist aesthetics, but also because this current work deals so much with time
Erin Lyndal Martin reviews Franny Choi’s “Soft Science”
CONSCIOUSNESS RAISED “This is a test to determine if you have consciousness,” Franny Choi writes in Soft Science. Clearly referencing the 1950’s Turing Test that evaluates artificial intelligence, Choi reappropriates that line of inquiry to reconsider the way that otherness is constructed in opposition to autonomy. The book’s epigraph from cyber-feminist Donna Haraway (author of The Cyborg Manifesto) is precisely
Joshua Corey reviews Amish Trivedi’s “Your Relationship to Motion Has Changed”
E PLURIBUS UNUM Your Relationship to Motion Has Changed Amish Trivedi Shearsman Books $17 paperback, 84 pp. January 2019 Amish Trivedi’s second full-length collection takes its epigraph from Joseph Ceravolo, who assembled Transmigration Solo, a collection of his earliest poems, by intuition and feel. “Whether I chose for contrast or for similarity of mood, I don’t know,” Ceravolo
Republic Cafe by David Biespiel reviewed by Craig Brandis
Republic Café is David Biespiel’s sixth book of poetry. It is arguably his finest work. Loosely based on Alain Resnais’ romantic drama film Hiroshima Mon Amour, this book-length poem borrows the movie’s main storyline and recasts it as a shape-shifting Noh play, presented in 54 numbered sections. The story follows two lovers over a 36-hour period as they meet and
