How Shootings Go Viral: A Review of Jeff Chon’s Hashtag Good Guy With a Gun

Mallory SmartApril 20, 2021

On this day 22 years ago news coverage about Columbine spread rapidly, and broadly. By the time the shooters exhausted all their energy from firing at their cla...

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We Are So Alone In the World: A review of The Handsome Man by Brad Casey

Mallory SmartJanuary 10, 2021

Recommended for: manic oddballs and lonely hipsters everywhere    When the world is upended, where will you go? Will your mind linger and wonder what’s next...

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Odd and Lonesome and Fascinating: A Review of Hosho McCreesh’s Chinese Gucci

Alana M. KelleyDecember 15, 2020

FOMO, lost-love, and the desire to be both liked and not give a fuck what anyone thinks about you are just some of the themes within McCreesh’s debut novel, Chi...

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“A “Collected Works” Comprised of All the Times Your Life Fell Apart” / A Review of Brian Alan Ellis’ Sad Laughter

Alana M. KelleyNovember 30, 2020

I’ve never wanted to both go to waffle house more often and never go to waffle house ever again.   Brian Alan Ellis asks us “...isn’t this a fucking ...

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A Love Unendingly Deep: A Review of Tanya Holtland’s Requisite

Alana M. KelleyOctober 28, 2020

Tanya Holtland’s debut book Requisite, meaning a thing that is necessary, is exactly that. Its message is blunt but delivered softly. Requisite reads as a cerem...

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Strength, Perseverance, and Resilience: A review of “Final Girl” by Lauren Milici

Mallory SmartOctober 9, 2020

I’m watching Scream for the 20th time in my life or something close to that. I always listen to something or watch something in the background while writing bec...

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Not Drowning but Waving: A review of LAKE OF URINE by Guillermo Stitch

Mallory SmartAugust 11, 2020

This novel is surprisingly good. I hate stating that in such a candid way but even I was shocked that a book with such a strange and grotesque title could be be...

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Face to Face: A Review of “The Kinks: Songs of the Semi-Detached” by Mark Doyle

Mallory SmartJuly 13, 2020

The Kinks: Songs of the Semi-Detached by Mark Doyle is a book and a class apart. That is honestly the best way I can describe it and anything else would be a di...

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Transformative Analysis: a review of Rebekah Morgan’s Hotel Alexander

Blake WallinApril 17, 2020

Rebekah chose the hotel as a (transitional) waystation between modes of being, modes of identity—modes of being that are transient and both spring from and nece...

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America at Play

McKenna ClarkeMarch 15, 2020

Read this book, read it backwards, read the instructions, forget them, and read it again. Mathias Svalina’s, America at Play, is a collection of game scenarios ...

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About Time: a review of Carolyn Forché’s In the Lateness of the World

Blake WallinMarch 13, 2020

It has become a commonplace to bash the preeminent poet Carolyn Forché for allegedly trauma-seeking, risk-averse poetic practice, especially after her second co...

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Replacing Furballs with Truffles: a review of Juliette Sebock’s How My Cat Saved My Life

Blake WallinFebruary 14, 2020

I never thought I would finish – much less enjoy – a poetry collection solely devoted to our feline friends, but here we are. Clichés are about currency. If ...

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Poetry by Its Own Name: a review of Homie by Danez Smith

Blake WallinJanuary 26, 2020

If the bait-and-switch of the title bothers you, this is not the book for you. The results of approaching this book far outweigh Danez Smith’s previous two coll...

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The Death of Nihilism: A review of Noah Cicero’s GIVE IT TO THE GRAND CANYON

Blake WallinJanuary 10, 2020

Ah, the Grand Canyon. Purveyor of crushed dreams and desperation, overseer of Vegas excess and western stoicism, keeper of our nation’s hopes and secrets. &n...

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“We Swim Out Forever”: Jack C Bucks’ Gathering View

Mallory SmartAugust 1, 2018

  This first collection by Jack C Buck is uncompromising and hopeful. Split into three sections, the poems come together to form a narrative that ta...

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A Review of Quick Fix by Ctch Bsnss

Shannon CawleyJuly 27, 2018

Whenever my writing career first began in 2015, one of the first voices I became obsessed with was that of Catch Business’s. Not only did her poems become a phy...

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Mostly Flesh: Thoughts on Claudia Cortese’s “Wasp Queen”

Laura KnicklebineJuly 10, 2017

Look here: this is Lucy’s life. It’s covered in rust, because Lucy prefers it that way. It’s a flesh ball of dirt, blood and memory that Lucy holds in her own h...

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Squids in Love, and other Absurdisms: Thoughts on Michael Sikkema’s Chapbook

Laura KnicklebineMay 29, 2017

It’s hard to pin this little book up against proper scenery. Sikkema throws it around too quickly, like a noxious ball of fire. Poems tumble in the depths of ou...

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An Honest Self: Beyza Ozer’s Fail Better

Max HeidelbergerApril 9, 2017

One of the most disorienting pieces of prose I’ve read is Samuel Beckett’s Westward Ho. In intentionally clipped and fragmented style, Beckett dissects personho...

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In a Studio, In Chicago, I Write a Review: Thoughts on Shy Watson’s New Chapbook

Laura KnicklebineFebruary 26, 2017

Shy Watson’s candid chapbook leaves something to be desired-something specific. It narrates a suffocating crush. A hopeless attraction, detrimental to a young p...

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Of Fathers and Sons: Devin Kelly’s Blood on Blood

Max HeidelbergerJanuary 22, 2017

There’s much that’s been said and written about the rust belt and blue-collar America in the aftermath of the 2016 election. As a cultural group which—very broa...

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Review of Dragons by Melissa Dickey

Laura KnicklebineDecember 18, 2016

During birth, mother and daughter become strangers. Motherhood is a foreign concept, not as instinctive as expected and a daughter remains a strange, inanimat...

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Poetry of the Posthuman: A Review of The Plural Space

Max HeidelbergerOctober 30, 2016

The title of Matthew Mahaney’s The Plural Space invites a question: what is the plural space? The plural space could best be described as a liminal place; the...

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Review of “Prophet Fever” by Jennifer Hanks

Rachel Charlene LewisJuly 31, 2016

Jennifer Hanks' "Prophet Fever" is a bizarre and molded sparkle in a world filled to the brim with chapbooks that only come close to the success they have undou...

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Review of “Evergreen” by Sarah Frances Moran

Rachel Charlene LewisJuly 24, 2016

It remains ridiculously important to discuss things like sexual violence in the world at large, but, specifically, in the poetry world, and in her poetry collec...

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Review of “I Have Devoted My Life to the Clitoris” by Elizabeth Hall

Rachel Charlene LewisJuly 17, 2016

I am very much the sort of aggressively-obsessed-with-vaginas type who is drawn immediately to books like Elizabeth Hall’s "I Have Devoted My Life to the Clitor...

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Review of “Father, Husband” by Scherezade Siobhan

Rachel Charlene LewisJuly 10, 2016

This is a thing so bodily that it requires it be felt. Indo-Roma writer Scherezade Siobhan’s full length collection, "Father, Husband," explores through the sli...

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Review of “Ghosts Still Walking” by Do Nguyen Mai

Rachel Charlene LewisJuly 3, 2016

Do Nguyen Mai’s debut collection stuns with stabbing diction and fluid conversation. There is a softness to her sounds, but a violence to her verbs. A sense of ...

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Review of “VHS and Why it’s Hard to Live” by Tatiana Ryckman

Rachel Charlene LewisJune 26, 2016

In Tatiana Ryckman’s debut collection of flash nonfiction, technology meets the body meets the haze of memory. There is a rawness to it, a knowledge that time f...

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Review of “Actual Cloud” by Dalton Day

Rachel Charlene LewisJune 19, 2016

Big things are small soft things, here. In his debut full length collection from Salò Press, "Actual Cloud," Dalton Day talks fear of death, dependence, and exi...

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