Picks

Books in Brief

Eight recent volumes of poetry, prose, and photography, reviewed by our editors

Books in Brief

Eight recent volumes of poetry, prose, and photography, reviewed by our editors

Kathryn Maris on Wave House by Elizabeth Arnold | Friday Pick

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.

Favorites from the Last 10 Years, Selected by Christopher Crawford

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.

Favorites from the Last 10 Years, Selected by Michael Stein

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.

Favorites from the Last 10 Years, Selected by Stephan Delbos

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.

Favorites from the Last 10 Years, Selected by Joshua Mensch

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.

Favorites from the Last 10 Years, Selected by Jan Zikmund

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.

Dante

Books in Brief | Friday Pick

Herewith a fresh selection of our favorite recent poetry, fiction, and biography in translation from Ukrainian, Hungarian, Czech, and Italian.

Books in Brief | Friday Pick

B O D Y Editors recommend a handful of recently-published books they admire and think you should read.

Magnetized by Carlos Busqued | Review

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.”

The Night Circus | Review

  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 | Review

  And My Head Exploded Selected and translated by Geoffrey Chew Jantar Publishing 2018, 200 pp     And My Head Exploded: Tales of Desire,

Donald Hall (1928-2018)

  DONALD HALL was an inveterate New Englander. This is one casual secret of everything he wrote, from his poetry to his books about poetry,

QUAD by Alistair Noon | Friday Pick

  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

Concerto al-Quds by Adonis | Friday Pick

  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

Slovak Fiction Week: Into the Spotlight

    Into the Spotlight An anthology of Slovak fiction Translated from the Slovak by Magdalena Mullek and Julia Sherwood Published by Three String Books

Friday Pick: Eric Ekstrand’s Laodicea

  Laodicea By Eric Ekstrand Omnidawn 96 pages   The irreconcilability of two visions – yours and mine, yours and Erik Ekstrand’s, the irreconcilability between

Friday Pick: Summer Reads

  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

Friday Pick: Gradually The World

  Gradually The World: New & Selected Poems, 1982–2013 By Burt Kimmelman BlazeVox 252 pages Burt Kimmelman is a poet of observation. Over the course

Friday Pick: Kansas City Lightning

  Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker Harper Collins 365 pages When Charlie Parker died at the age of 34 in

Friday Pick: Carol Frost

  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

Friday Pick: A Poet’s Mind

  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

Friday Pick: The Plays of Kenneth Koch

  The Banquet: The Complete Plays, Films, and Librettos By Kenneth Koch Coffee House Press 634 pages This is no ordinary book of scripts. Collecting

Friday Pick: The Hotel Oneira

  The Hotel Oneira By August Kleinzahler Faber & Faber 112 pages August Kleinzahler’s latest poems are exquisite noir, peopled with nighthawk narrators who feast

Friday Pick: Einstein On The Beach

  Einstein on the Beach: An Opera in Four Acts Directed by Robert Wilson Music & Lyrics by Philip Glass Choreography by Lucinda Childs Should

Friday Pick: Don’t Touch The Poet

  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

Friday Pick: Strange Americana

  The death of Phil Everly (1939 – 2014) on January 3 inspired an outpouring of tributes for the American singer-songwriter and half — with

Friday Pick: 10 Predictions For 2014

  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

Friday Pick: Air With Armed Men

  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,

Friday Pick: Truth, Justice, & Jheri Curls

  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

Friday Pick: #HenryCore

  Recovery John Berryman Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973 272 pages   Inspired by the shocking brilliance of #HenryCore, which combines the music of Eminem

Friday Pick: Pavel Srut’s Paper Shoes

  Paper Shoes By Pavel Šrut Translated by Ema Katrovas 131 pages Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2009.   For fifty years, Pavel Šrut has been

Friday Pick: The Odyssey Of Samuel Glass

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)

Friday Pick: Louis C.K., The Emersonian

  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

Friday Pick: Under This Terrible Sun

  Under This Terrible Sun By Carlos Busqued Translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell Frisch & Co., 2013 140 pages   To say that Carlos

Friday Pick: Nazım Hikmet

  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

Friday Pick: With Robert Lowell & His Circle

  With Robert Lowell And His Circle By Kathleen Spivack Northeastern University Press 256 pages Examined through the lense of literary nostalgia, Boston, Massachusetts in