Books in Brief
December 1, 2023
Eight recent volumes of poetry, prose, and photography, reviewed by our editors
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Eight recent volumes of poetry, prose, and photography, reviewed by our editors
Eight recent volumes of poetry, prose, and photography, reviewed by our editors
From her earliest work — before the idea of eco-entanglement was widely adopted by poets — Arnold viewed nature not as an ‘object’ or ‘other’ but as an inextricable (and clearly endangered) system in which humanity participates.
We’ve been lucky enough to publish many, many brilliant, original, and moving pieces — and there are several amongst them that could easily be included within this list. But these pieces here, these are five that, for whatever reasons, have stayed with me.
If there is a common denominator among the translated fiction published in B O D Y, it is work that maintains a precarious yet exhilarating balance between wild flights of imagination, unbridled humor and grappling with an often harsh reality. Read my favorites here.
Publishing writing you love is the greatest pleasure of editing a literary journal. It’s hard to believe B O D Y has been around for 10 years and I’m astounded by the quality and variety of writing in our archives. Herewith some of my favorites.
It has been an enormous privilege to edit this magazine and I’m astounded by the sheer volume of great writing we’ve been entrusted with over the past ten years. The poems, stories, and essays in this selection represent, to me, what this project has really been about since the beginning: discovering great new writing.
B O D Y, through its ties with translators, has always given space to intriguing voices from the past. When selecting my favourites on the occasion of the magazine’s ten-year anniversary, it seemed fitting to highlight three deceased poets – a Hungarian, Czech, and Russian – that deserve more attention.
These poems explore the changes wrought by flight as in fleeing from, forced travel, emigration, leaving with no guarantee you will return, sometimes knowing you won’t.
My Seven Lives tells a story of 20th century Central Europe through the voice of Slovak journalist Agneša Kalinová.
Dream of a Journey: Selected Poems, brings to readers of English the first full-length volume of poems by Czech poet Kateřina Rudčenková.
Herewith a fresh selection of our favorite recent poetry, fiction, and biography in translation from Ukrainian, Hungarian, Czech, and Italian.
B O D Y Editors recommend a handful of recently-published books they admire and think you should read.
The rich tradition of communing with the dead through poetry stretches back from the magic and metaphysics of Lucie Brock-Boido to James Merrill at the
Halloween night, 1963. John Berryman is reading with Robert Lowell at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. This is the first time Berryman has
Every poem in the collection has, somewhere in the collection, another poem which is its opposite.
Mark Terrill’s charming, masterful, workaday, transcendental lyric poetry is more compelling than ever
You read a book about a serial killer expecting to feel terror when he raises his gun or knife but here it comes in bursts of hard-earned self-insight: “I fantasized about being a person, which I never was in real life.”
Ernest Hilbert’s latest collection, Last One Out, addresses not only our individual mortality, but a kind of “last call” for the world as we know it.
Maybe We’re Leaving By Jan Balabán Translated by Charles S. Kraszewski Glagoslav Publications 2018, 164 pp Ray Bradbury’s Machineries of Joy (1964) includes a
Requiem with an Amulet in Its Beak By Elizabeth Knapp Washington Writers’ Publishing House 2019, 73 pages Reviewed by Francesca Bell ELIZABETH KNAPP’s
The Night Circus and Other Stories Short stories by Uršula Kovalyk Translated by Julia and Peter Sherwood Parthian Books When I first
And My Head Exploded Selected and translated by Geoffrey Chew Jantar Publishing 2018, 200 pp And My Head Exploded: Tales of Desire,
Concert at a Railway Station: Selected Poems By Osip Mandelstam Translated by Alistair Noon Shearsman Books 142 pages Born in 1891, Osip Mandelstam is
Thin Rising Vapors By Seth Rogoff Sagging Meniscus Press, 2018 240 pages We don’t read our friends’ personal diaries or emails not so much
Insistence By Ailbhe Darcy Bloodaxe Books, 2018 80 pages “But I’m not sure we’ll ever say the world is ours again, not sure we’ll
DONALD HALL was an inveterate New Englander. This is one casual secret of everything he wrote, from his poetry to his books about poetry,
The Only Story By Julian Barnes Penguin, 2018 272 pages Julian Barnes is the kind of writer who composes the same book again and
QUAD by Alistair Noon Longbarrow Press 2017, 20 pages I can’t help but associate Alistair Noon’s title Quad with Samuel Beckett’s late television play
Red: The History of a Color By Michel Pastoureau Translated from the French by Jody Gladding Princeton University Press 216 pages When Ian MacKaye
The Blind Man Marcel Duchamp & Beatrice Wood & Henri-Pierre Roché Edited by Sophie Seita Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017 “We had lost confidence
Falling Awake By Alice Oswald Cape Poetry 2016, 96 pp Alice Oswald, one of Britain’s most celebrated poets and an eminent contributor to the
Advice from the Lights By Stephen Burt Graywolf Press 2017, 96 pp In his book Infidel Poetics (2009), Daniel Tiffany praises the obscurity of
Concerto al-Quds By Adonis Translated by Khaled Mattawa Yale University Press 96 pages When Donald Trump recently and controversially announced that the United States
Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time Edited by Gennady Barabtarlo Princeton University Press, 2017 224 pages In 1964 Vladimir Nabokov undertook an experiment to test
Elizabeth Bishop and Translation By Mariana Machová Lexington Books 2016, 182 pp “Is it lack of imagination that makes us come / to imagined
The Temple She Became By Rachel Custer Five Oaks Press 2017, 86 pp I first became interested in Rachel Custer’s poetry last October when
B O D Y is proud to present our nominees for the 2017 Best of the Net Anthology. POETRY: Michael Collier for Meadow
Update: Poems 2011-2012 By Dennis O’Driscoll Anvil Press Poetry 2014, 64 pp Death never seemed to stray far from the attention of Irish poet-critic
The Poem Is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them By Stephen Burt Harvard University Press 2016, 432 pp Stephen Burt’s
Into the Spotlight An anthology of Slovak fiction Translated from the Slovak by Magdalena Mullek and Julia Sherwood Published by Three String Books
Geis By Caitríona O’Reilly Bloodaxe Books 2015, 64 pp Caitríona O’Reilly’s intriguingly obscure poems offer peeks into the unspoken and wilfully ignored aspects of
Outer Space: Selected Poems By Cathal McCabe Metre Editions 2016, 144 pages It is not common to see a poet’s debut appended with the
Sounds Familiar or The Beast of Artek (A Gothic Novel) By Zinovy Zinik Divus 245 pages Zinovy Zinik’s Sounds Familiar or The Beast of
The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish By Joshua Weiner The University of Chicago Press 2013, 68 pages The promise of a
Nick Demske – Nick Demske Fence Books, 2010 88 pages Reading Nick Demske’s poems in B O D Y this week brought me back
Night Sky with Exit Wounds By Ocean Vuong Copper Canyon Press 89 pages Occasionally there is a book so exquisitely realized that a reviewer
Story Book By Douglas Piccinnini The Cultural Society 122 pages When confronted for the first time with the genre of “prose poetry,” any kindergarten
The Selected Poetry of Emilio Villa Translated by Dominic Siracusa Contra Mundum Press 708 pages Who are the greatest Italian poets? Ask the
Laodicea By Eric Ekstrand Omnidawn 96 pages The irreconcilability of two visions – yours and mine, yours and Erik Ekstrand’s, the irreconcilability between
Transit, by Anna Seghers Translated from German by Margot Bettauer Dembo New York Review of Books (2013) 257 pages At the end of
The Notebooks By Jean-Michel Basquiat Edited By Larry Warsh Princeton University Press, 2015 As an object, The Notebooks by Jean-Michel Basquiat is one
Delicious Foods by James Hannaham Little, Brown and Company (2015) 384 pages The opening scene shows us Eddie, who just got his hands chopped
Green: The History of a Color by Michel Pastoureau Translated from the French by Jody Gladding Princeton University Press 239 pages Do you have
Beer Trails: The Brewery in the Bohemian Forest by Evan Rail Amazon, 2015 60 pages Appearing on a Prague-based episode of No Reservations, an
To Keep Time | Poems by Joseph Massey Omnidawn, October 2014 69 pages About half way through To Keep Time, Joseph Massey has a
Accepting the Disaster | Poems by Joshua Mehigan Farrar, Straus and Giroux July 2014, 96 pages Over two decades ago, Vernon Shetley remarked that
McSweeney’s Issue No 46 Edited by Daniel Galera McSweeney’s 271 pgs. If you start reading McSweeney’s Latin American Crime issue expecting something resembling
It’s about as bleak a situation as you can imagine getting into, struck down with malaria in the Sudanese desert, twelve hours from the nearest pharmacy, lying helpless in a mud hut with neither prayer nor magic slowing death’s approach.
If I Don’t Breathe How Do I Sleep by Joe Wenderoth Wave Books, 2014 79 Pages Preface Some months ago I agreed to review
Rough Day by Ed Skoog Copper Canyon Press (2013) 82 pages “all I can tell you is my own experience / and I
How Should a Person Be?: A Novel from Life by Sheila Heti Henry Holt and Co. (2012) 320 pages “Where
Orphan by Jan Heller Levi Alice James Books (2014) 80 pages T he first word that comes to mind reading Jan Heller Levi’s newest book
For Tamara by Sarah Lang House of Anansi 104 pages Sarah Lang’s second book of poetry, For Tamara, is an utterly compelling read.
Siste Viator by Sarah Manguso Four Way Books, 2006 63 pages Sarah Manguso’s second book of poetry, Siste Viator, is a book which
It’s that time of year again. The days are getting longer, the heat is getting hotter, and the fecund cicadas are grinding their tired
Gradually The World: New & Selected Poems, 1982–2013 By Burt Kimmelman BlazeVox 252 pages Burt Kimmelman is a poet of observation. Over the course
Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker Harper Collins 365 pages When Charlie Parker died at the age of 34 in
Natalie Belz remembers the late Russell Edson, who died last week at the age of 79. Edson was known as a master of the
Carol Frost is one of America’s foremost practitioners of the lyric poem. The author of numerous books of poetry, including the forthcoming Trilogy: Selected
So Recently Rent A World New and Selected Poems By Andrei Codrescu Coffee House Press 352 pages So Recently Rent a World is a
The Itinerant Girl’s Guide To Self-Hypnosis By Joanna Penn Cooper Brooklyn Arts Press 62 pages Joanna Penn Cooper’s debut collection, The Itinerant Girl’s Guide
The Median Flow Poems 1943-1973 By Theodore Enslin Black Sparrow Press 170 pages The poet Theodore Enslin (1925-2011) was above all a musical poet.
A Poet’s Mind: Collected Interviews with Robert Duncan, 1960–1985 Edited by Christopher Wagstaff North Atlantic Books 488 pages It’s hard to imagine a collection
When the Heart Drowns in Its Own Blood By Philipp Schönthaler Translated by Amanda DeMarco 32 pages Is there any sport more suggestive of
The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley Edited by Rod Smith, Peter Baker, and Kaplan Harris University of California Press 512 pages What emerges immediately
The Banquet: The Complete Plays, Films, and Librettos By Kenneth Koch Coffee House Press 634 pages This is no ordinary book of scripts. Collecting
There are no real winners in the present stalemate in Ukraine, but one must concede pyrrhic rhetorical victory to neo-conservatives who shouted about Vladimir
Youtube is a 21st century thrift shop, where the past drifts back to us, a plastic cup acting like a boat in the water.
The Hotel Oneira By August Kleinzahler Faber & Faber 112 pages August Kleinzahler’s latest poems are exquisite noir, peopled with nighthawk narrators who feast
Einstein on the Beach: An Opera in Four Acts Directed by Robert Wilson Music & Lyrics by Philip Glass Choreography by Lucinda Childs Should
We are saddened by the death of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former Poet Laureate Maxine Kumin (1925–2014), one of the finest poets of her
Don’t Touch the Poet: The Life and Times of Joel Oppenheimer By Lyman Gilmore 256 pages The public life of Joel Oppenheimer (1930-1988) traces
Ring of Bone Collected Poems By Lew Welch City Lights 256 pages The Beats are big business. In recent years there has
t’s hard to argue with the generational anthology’s promise: “Go on,” it says, “pick me up. If it’s verse you’re after, here’s a handy
The death of Phil Everly (1939 – 2014) on January 3 inspired an outpouring of tributes for the American singer-songwriter and half — with
Editor’s Note: On the winter solstice, the B O D Y editors found themselves ensconced in a velvet-lined chamber exactly half-way up an ancient
Air With Armed Men By Louis Simpson London Magazine Editions, 1972 There are a lot of books out there. Books you’ve never heard of,
Mezzanines By Matthew Olzmann Alice James Books, 2013 58 pages A common complaint against contemporary English-language poetry is that it imposes barriers
The Marvel of Biographical Bookkeeping By Francis Nenik Translated by Katy Derbyshire 64 pages Readux Books Francis Nenik’s formally inventive epistolary novella The Marvel
Sun Alley By Cecilia Ştefănescu Translated by Alexandra Coliban & Andreea Höfer Istros Books 2013 Obsessive love and the desire for freedom is portrayed
Seeing By José Saramago Translated by Margaret Jull Costa Harvill Secker, 2006 353 pages In Nobel Prize-winning novelist José Saramago’s satire Seeing (Ensaio sobre
My Crazy Century: A Memoir By Ivan Klíma Translated by Craig Cravens Grove Press 534 pages Ivan Klíma has never been the most wildly
Recovery John Berryman Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973 272 pages Inspired by the shocking brilliance of #HenryCore, which combines the music of Eminem
Paper Shoes By Pavel Šrut Translated by Ema Katrovas 131 pages Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2009. For fifty years, Pavel Šrut has been
The Odyssey of Samuel Glass By Bernard Kops David Paul Publishing, 2012 272 pages In 1881, the notorious anarchist organization Narodnaya Volya (The People’s Will)
A round up of some of the books, albums and performances recently published and now available from B O D Y contributors. For your
Few viewing this page will be unfamiliar with the recent e-hubbub over Louis C.K.’s comments on the Conan O’Brien show regarding smartphones, only the
Theodore Roethke is alive and well. Not in the literal sense of course, as the Pulitzer prize-winning poet died of a heart attack in
Under This Terrible Sun By Carlos Busqued Translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell Frisch & Co., 2013 140 pages To say that Carlos
Nazim Hikmet: The Life & Times of Turkey’s World Poet By Mutlu Konuk Blasing 294 pages Mutlu Konuk Blasing is America’s leading scholar of
With Robert Lowell And His Circle By Kathleen Spivack Northeastern University Press 256 pages Examined through the lense of literary nostalgia, Boston, Massachusetts in
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