Reviewed by David Madden Gerald Duff’s Fugitive Days is a wry contribution to the growing literature of writers’ encounters with writers. A side value is that writers reading about such encounters are reminded, as I am, of their own encounters with other, usually older, famous, or once much more famous than now, writers of fiction, […]
September Read of the Month: “Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys,” by D.A. Powell
September 4, 2013 by 1 Comment
Reviewed by Celia Bland This volume describes a slip—both personal and cultural—into self-indulgence and escapism. In poem after poem, romantic ideals are subsumed in quick encounters, dirty puns, and Powell’s figurative décolletage of a dowager poet, a witty but jaded survivor of the courtly lists. Which is not to imply that Powell is in drag—she’s […]
“The Guest House,” by Erika Marks
August 21, 2013 by 1 Comment
Reviewed by Donna Meredith One of the biggest pleasures in reading The Guest House by Erika Marks is watching the missteps in communication among three generations of characters. Readers are treated to at least half a dozen viewpoints as the tale unfolds. The various viewpoints and introduction of many characters make the first chapters of […]
“Remembering Medgar Evers,” by Minrose Gwin
August 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Chris Timmons Medgar Evers should be of interest to anyone who has examined the racial history of the United States, and of the South. It’s too bad he is now near-forgotten. Undoubtedly, general American forgetfulness has much to do with it; as far as history goes, Americans do not have much memory. Nor […]
August Read of the Month: “Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers,” by Frank X Walker
August 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by William Aarnes One of the shortcomings of the recently published Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry is its failure to include poems by Frank X Walker. Perhaps the reason that a sampling of Walker’s poems does not appear is the kind of poems he writes. The editor of the […]
“Confession,” by Richard Freis
July 31, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Donna Meredith Confession could just as easily have been titled Obsession, although that name has been snapped up by numerous other books and a popular perfume. This debut novel by Richard Freis is the first person tale of 55-year-old George Burden’s fixation on a woman much younger than his wife—even younger than his […]