Thank you for taking the time to do this interview, John. I know that readers of the Southern Literary Review are excited to hear from you. Dixie Bohemia began, your Introduction explains, with the substance of the Fleming Lectures you delivered at Louisiana State University in April 2011. Here we are just a year and a […]
Archives for October 2012
October Read of the Month: Dixie Bohemia, by John Shelton Reed
Reviewed by Allen Mendenhall John Shelton Reed’s Dixie Bohemia is difficult to classify. It’s easier to say what it isn’t than to say what it is. It isn’t biography. It isn’t documentary. It isn’t quite history, although it does organize and present information about a distinct class of past individuals interacting and sometimes living together […]
“Whispering Tides,” by Guido Mattioni
Reviewed by Patricia O’Sullivan. Italians Alberto Landi and his wife, Nina, love to travel, and their favorite destination is Savannah, Georgia. In fact, they go there so often that they are made honorary citizens by Savannah’s mayor. When Nina dies, Alberto can no longer live in Italy because the memories of her are too painful. […]
“The Inquisitor’s Key,” by Jefferson Bass
Reviewed by Carrol Wolverton Juxtaposing stories from the 1300’s with the parallel story of a University of Tennessee anthropologist, Jefferson Bass’s The Inquisitor’s Key is exhilarating fiction. Jefferson Bass (a pseudonym for two men: Dr. Bill Bass and journalist Jon Jefferson) has no problem creating intrigue involving bad popes, crucified martyrs, and a slightly dense […]
“Karma Crisis,” by Nathan Brown
Reviewed by William Aarnes Nathan Brown’s Karma Crisis: New and Selected Poems (Mezcalita Press 2012) is an accessible, easy-going collection. Typically, the speaker in the poems seems to be Brown himself. A “wayfarer,” “a flaming liberal-hippie-type,” a “Hopeful cynic,” he is dismissive of Language Poets, postmodern theory, the Southern Baptist Convention, politicians, corporations, and […]
William Aarnes
William Aarnes has had poems in Poetry, The Southern Review, and FIELD. He teaches at Furman Univeristy.