Reviewed by William Walsh Generally, when I read a book, for pleasure or review, I thumb through the weighted pages to feel the texture, the heft of what I can expect. Some may say that I harp on the tactile too much, but there is always the importance of the physical connection between the book […]
July Read of the Month: “The Disappearing Act,” by Sara Pirkle Hughes
July 3, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Anya Krugovoy Silver In her consistently outstanding debut volume of poetry, The Disappearing Act, Sara Pirkle Hughes demonstrates her facility with beginnings and endings. Poems about childhood, family relationships, and the fleeting, fraught nature of sexual desire detail life’s complexities while resisting answers to its mysteries. Hughes writes masterful first and last lines: […]
Richard Rankin
January 31, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Richard Rankin has been the Anderson Davis Warlick Head of School at Gaston Day School for the last 17 years. He is the author of several books, including While There Were Still Wild Birds: A Personal History of Southern Quail Hunting, which is forthcoming in May 2018 with Mercer University Press. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He and his wife, Sarah […]
February Read of the Month: “Kiss of the Jewel Bird,” by Dale Cramer
February 1, 2017 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl All things being equal: Possessed by spiritual dissatisfaction, or a hunger for knowledge or mastery, Faust makes a pact with the devil. It’s an old legend, of course, with tales told as early as the 1500s, and the stuff of drama, Marlowe and Goethe, and then Thomas Mann. The Faustian […]
“Rise and Shine,” by Johnathan Scott Barrett
January 18, 2017 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl Our late friend Bill Borland was from Eudora, Arkansas; he loved to cook gumbos and such and hush puppies. Once, before we were on our way to his home for dinner, my wife asked me what a hush puppy was and I said cornmeal, wheat flour, eggs, salt, baking […]
“South of the Etowah,” by Raymond L. Atkins
December 7, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl The “Etowah” in the title to Raymond L. Atkins’s recently published book refers to a 164-mile-long waterway rising in northwest Georgia to begin flowing south and then west through Rome, Georgia. If one had the interest, one might build a raft and, Huckleberry-like, float along through Alabama down to Mobile […]