After long wait, I’m pleased to announce a review of the stellar Ensō by Seattle-based Shin Yu Pai. This writ arrived out of a flash of creative exchanges between Shin Yu and me quite some time ago. It feels like quite a while ago at this point (all Pre-Covid), making this publication feel even more celebratory. Read the review of the unique book here.
Category: Book Reviews
My review of Catherine Owen’s extraordinary Riven is now up in North of Oxford.
My latest review revisits the works of Caroline Bergvall by way of her latest book, Alisoun Sings. It’s available in the online edition of Rain Taxi.
All the Useless Things Are Mine, featuring poetry by Thomas Walton and etchings/drawings by Douglas Miller, is an exquisite book, and I’m pleased that my review of it is now up at North of Oxford.
I’ve recently reviewed Black Case Volume I & II: Return From Exile by the legendary Joseph Jarman. The review’s in Rain Taxi. Support them by buying a copy of their print edition.
I have reviewed Ten and Story by Jennifer Firestone via North of Oxford. This review, and the others, can be found as links on my Reviews page. You can learn more about Jennifer Firestone at her website.
My review for May is up! Read my review of Paper Bells by Phan Nhiên Hạo here.
I’ve got a new review of Catherine Corman’s chapbook/short work, Salem, up at North of Oxford.
Read it here.
Two of my latest reviews are now in the print edition of Rain Taxi, now available for purchase.
- Earth by Hannah Brooks-Motl
- Codex by Joshua Lew McDermott
Both are excellent books. Please consider reading them and reading what I wrote about them!
My latest review is now in Rain Taxi! Laura Eve Engel’s Things That Go, where “the entirety of the world is moving, and our understanding along with it is moving too—often to our surprise and overwhelmingly beyond full comprehension.” Read more here.
A new review of Joe Hall’s mesmerizingly brutal poetry collection Someone’s Utopia, is now up at North of Oxford.
Categories
2019 in Books
It feels like just yesterday I posted about the 2018 books I read. The year most certainly did not fly by, and perhaps that’s because I was caught up in so much excellent reading over the past 12 months.
As per last year, what follows is a list of every title I read, with bolding for my “picks” or personal favorites. Note that some of these books made it into reviews, so they weren’t merely leisure reading.
Before the list, I need to shout out Goodreads, which now provides a snapshot of one’s reading. The data highlights are pretty fun, and open to the each user. They are also available to the public (see mine here).
Here are the books I read last year, with my most favorite in bold:
Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti
Ensō by Shin Yu Pai
Earth by Hannah Brooks-Motl
Chasing Clayoquot: A Wilderness Almanac by David Pitt-Brooke
Sailing by Ravens by Holly Hughes
What Rain Does by Ann Spers
26 Abductions by Maya Sonenberg
Preserving Fire: Selected Prose by Philip Lamantia
Water by Edward Burtynsky
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
One Hundred Myanmar Poems edited by Min Swe Hnit
Codex by Joshua Lew McDermott
A Slow Boiling Beach by Rauan Klassnik
Make It True Meets Medusario edited by José Kozer
On An Acre Shy of Eternity/ Micro Landscapes at the Edge by Robert Dash
Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine by Bebe Moore Campbell
Hawai’i by James Yeary
The Darkness Call: Essays by Gary Fincke
Remembrance of Water / Twenty-Five Trees by John Taylor
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
A Game for Swallows: To Die, to Leave, to Return by Zeina Abirached
Twilight (Twilight, #1) by Stephenie Meyer
Things That Go by Laura Eve Engel
AUX ARCS by Shin Yu Pai
A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld
Army of God: Joseph Kony’s War in Central Africa by David Axe
Latino USA: A Cartoon History by Ilan Stavans
The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel by Margaret Atwood and Renee Nault
Against Everything: Essays by Mark Greif
The World Is All That Does Befall Us by Thomas Walton
The White Book by Han Kang
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
The Good Rain: Across Time & Terrain in the Pacific Northwest by Timothy Egan
Paper Towns by John Green
Call And Response: A Migrant/Local Poetry Anthology edited by Joshua Ip
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
My Lot Is A Sky by Melissa Powers
Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
The United States of Wind: A Travelogue by Daniel Canty
Ideas Have No Smell: Three Belgian Surrealist Booklets
No Finis: Triangle Testimonies, 1911 by Deborah Woodard
Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky
Seminary Poems by Diane di Prima
Poems of Federico García Lorca chosen and translated by Paul Blackburn with twenty one drawings by Basil King
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
Soundtrack to a Fleeting Masculinity by Benjamin Schmitt
Habitation: Collected Poems by Sam Hamill
Huge Cloudy by Bill Carty
What I Knew by Eleni Sikelianos
The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book by Gord Hill
Widowland by Pamela Manché Pearce
Poems from the Passionate Heart: Reflections on Healing and Awakening by Roy Holman
In These Curved Spaces by Andrea Yew
Footnotes on Falling by Joshua Ip
Afterimage by Werner Kho
The Woman Who Turned Into A Vending Machine by Natalie Wang
Human Acts by Han Kang
BEEF by Nurul Amillin Hussain
To the Barricades by Stephen Collis
The Divine Within: Selected Writings on Enlightenment by Aldous Huxley
Futurist Performance by Michael Kirby
All Actors: Fifty Poems by Min Swe Hnit
The Post-War Digital Radio by Kyi Zaw Aye
Alphabet for the Entrants by Vasilisk Gnedov
Feed Me Weird Things by Lisa Rogal
I Have Never Been Able to Sing by Alexis Almeida
Bones Will Crow: An Anthology of Burmese Poetry edited by James Byrne
Meadowlark West by Philip Lamantia
A Drink of Red Mirror by Kim Hyesoon
The Burden of Being Burmese by ko ko thett
My Own Voice by Zeyar Lynn
First Mountain by Zhang Er
Sugar Factory by Emily Wallis Hughes
Midden by Julia Bouwsma
follow the mekong home by Krystal M. Chuon
Mexico City Blues by Jack Kerouac
American Prophets: Interviews with thinkers activists poets and visionaries by Paul E Nelson
My new book review of Robert Dash’s On an Acre Shy of Eternity: Micro Landscapes at the Edge is now available on North of Oxford. This was a fantastic read, and viewing, both in its poetry and photography.
Now up to be read etc on North of Oxford, a review of Klassnik’s new collection, A SLOW BOILING BEACH.
There are two new reviews on Yellow Rabbits. One is for Widowland by Pamela Manché Pearce, and one is for What I Knew by Eleni Sikelianos.