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
Like by A.E. Stallings reviewed by Devin King
LOST OBJECTS At the beginning of Book Two of Lucretius’ The Nature Of Things—Book One, you’ll remember, sets up that the universe is built from atoms and the idea of the clinamen—Lucretius writes what to me is one of the more difficult of his arguments to adjust to a present ethics of encounter. Here’s A.E. Stallings’ translation of the lines
Mystery and Surprise: Two Chinese Poets; reviewed by Alexander Dickow
The contemporary Chinese poet Mang Ke and the Tang dynasty poet Li Shangyin (9th century) could hardly be more different. The former, particularly in the later poems of the chronologically arranged collection, seems fresh and spontaneous, capricious; the latter hermetic and mysterious.
Immanent Foundation: Norman Finkelstein, reviewed by Joshua Corey
“Decision,” the first poem in Norman Finkelstein’s new book, announces an end to preliminaries and prolegomena: you must decide for the sake of whatever you love, whatever it is you still would cherish. Here is the formula. Here is the program. Here is the talisman. Here is the code.
Crawlspace: Nikki Wallschlaeger, reviewed by Timothy Otte
Poetic forms are constraints. A constraint gives form and body, and also creates space. A body is a constraint. A sonnet is a constraint. A body is a sonnet and a room is a sonnet. And like bodies and rooms, sonnets take different shapes, variations on a theme: limbs, torso, head; walls, window, door; fourteen lines, argument, volta.
CAConrad: While Standing in Line for Death
Best known for the “(soma)tic” rituals that serve as the source materials for his verse and prose poems, poet, critic, and editor CAConrad is the embodiment of that old Whitman saw, a materialization of self-contradiction. In other words, he accepts, and thus enacts, the charge of the historical avant-garde: inaugurate the impossible as the negation (as if) of the world (as such).
Martha Collins: “Night Unto Night” and “Day Unto Day”
What are the heavens, and what is the firmament—what, a house, and for how long? How do we live, die, survive? Such existential questions, great and small, animate the devotional poetics of Martha Collins, translator and poet. With the recent publication of Night Unto Night (Milkweed, 2018), Collins completes a diptych twelve years in the making, which she first began with her collection, Day Unto Day (Milkweed, 2014).
