Book Reviews | Tarpaulin Sky Magazine
TELLING YOU WHAT TO THINK SINCE 2003 | IMAGE: NOAH SATERSTROM
Book Reviews | Tarpaulin Sky Magazine
TELLING YOU WHAT TO THINK SINCE 2003 | IMAGE: NOAH SATERSTROM
j/j hastain’s myrrh to re all myth reviewed by Joseph Cooper
We are all given a form, an identity, a self, but what happens when you outgrow the flesh, the pronoun, the title, the masculine/feminine social obligation? What does it mean to be a man? What does it to be a woman? Are we inside each other any less when we ignore our sheer sameness?
Joe Sacksteder reviews Gabriel Blackwell’s The Natural Dissolution of Fleeting-Improvised Men: The Last Letter of H.P. Lovecraft
The thing about Lovecraft’s characters is that they desperately want you to believe them but desperately don’t want to believe themselves. Blackwell embodies this ambivalence in order to confuse the distinction between fiction and non-fiction, editor and author, sickness and inspiration.
Seth Landman’s Sign You Were Mistaken reviewed by Connor Fisher
[D]istinct sentences are placed into arbitrary relation by the poem; this forces the reader to identify (or create) points where meaning adheres in the text and where it slips away or fails to accrete. Landman’s frequently abrupt style also operates as a formal extension of the book’s thematic concerns; it mirrors the nervous energy displayed throughout Sign You Were Mistaken.
Marthe Reed’s Gaze reviewed by Chantel Langlinais
"From political misgivings to redefining the traditional definitions of the gaze to exotic posing in art, the poems call upon us as readers to open a 'pentimenti of carved doors,' to see what lies behind them. To question. To pay attention to the world around us. To travel beyond the Western world."
Denver Quarterly’s fiction, V47 n3&4, reviewed by Maria Anderson
Volume 47 marks a turning point for the Denver Quarterly and represents new editor Laird Hunt's first hand at curating the content rather than overseeing work chosen by his predecessor, the poet Bin Ramke. When asked about his goals for the Denver Quarterly, Hunt says he aims to increase the drive for excellent fiction. "I am a novelist, and while the Quarterly has long been friendly to fiction writers, I think it is fair to say that it is better known as a venue for the best of contemporary poetry. I would love to see if we can make people rip open issues to get at the fiction in the way I know many do to get at the poetry."
Vanessa Place’s The Guilt Project: A Conceptual Review
"I am a criminal defense appellate attorney. I represent indigent sex offenders and sexually violent predators, all on appeal from felony convictions in the State of California. I have also supervised or otherwise assisted a number of other attorneys representing indigent appellate defendants. All told, I've been involved in about a thousand felony cases.... It’s a cliché that that a society is judged by how it treats its most despicable members, a cliché that mindful people accept in the abstract and reject in practice. But freedom of speech is relevant only when the opinions are vile, and due process meaningful only when applied to the daddy who rapes his son."
j/j hastain’s myrrh to re all myth reviewed by Joseph Cooper
We are all given a form, an identity, a self, but what happens when you outgrow the flesh, the pronoun, the title, the masculine/feminine social obligation? What does it mean to be a man? What does it to be a woman? Are we inside each other any less when we ignore our sheer sameness?
Joe Sacksteder reviews Gabriel Blackwell’s The Natural Dissolution of Fleeting-Improvised Men: The Last Letter of H.P. Lovecraft
The thing about Lovecraft’s characters is that they desperately want you to believe them but desperately don’t want to believe themselves. Blackwell embodies this ambivalence in order to confuse the distinction between fiction and non-fiction, editor and author, sickness and inspiration.
Seth Landman’s Sign You Were Mistaken reviewed by Connor Fisher
[D]istinct sentences are placed into arbitrary relation by the poem; this forces the reader to identify (or create) points where meaning adheres in the text and where it slips away or fails to accrete. Landman’s frequently abrupt style also operates as a formal extension of the book’s thematic concerns; it mirrors the nervous energy displayed throughout Sign You Were Mistaken.
Marthe Reed’s Gaze reviewed by Chantel Langlinais
"From political misgivings to redefining the traditional definitions of the gaze to exotic posing in art, the poems call upon us as readers to open a 'pentimenti of carved doors,' to see what lies behind them. To question. To pay attention to the world around us. To travel beyond the Western world."
Denver Quarterly’s fiction, V47 n3&4, reviewed by Maria Anderson
Volume 47 marks a turning point for the Denver Quarterly and represents new editor Laird Hunt's first hand at curating the content rather than overseeing work chosen by his predecessor, the poet Bin Ramke. When asked about his goals for the Denver Quarterly, Hunt says he aims to increase the drive for excellent fiction. "I am a novelist, and while the Quarterly has long been friendly to fiction writers, I think it is fair to say that it is better known as a venue for the best of contemporary poetry. I would love to see if we can make people rip open issues to get at the fiction in the way I know many do to get at the poetry."
Vanessa Place’s The Guilt Project: A Conceptual Review
"I am a criminal defense appellate attorney. I represent indigent sex offenders and sexually violent predators, all on appeal from felony convictions in the State of California. I have also supervised or otherwise assisted a number of other attorneys representing indigent appellate defendants. All told, I've been involved in about a thousand felony cases.... It’s a cliché that that a society is judged by how it treats its most despicable members, a cliché that mindful people accept in the abstract and reject in practice. But freedom of speech is relevant only when the opinions are vile, and due process meaningful only when applied to the daddy who rapes his son."