Curator Jorge Antonio Fernández succeeds, for the most part, in creating a stimulating show that is held together by formal and conceptual associations, not just political concerns.
Book Review: César Aira’s Miraculous Conception
In an age where technology has made the improbable perfectly plausible, squeezed out spontaneity, and raised skepticism about the nature of reality, how can we still believe in miracles? This is the crux of the novel, made delightfully vivid and comic by César Aira’s prose.
Book Review: The Overthrow of Pessimism — Sherman Alexie’s Song of Redemption
Grappling with one’s identity — complicated by the relationships between tradition and modernism, cultural history and the process of assimilation — is central to most of Sherman Alexie’s stories, and his exploration of these complexities is compelling and illuminating.
Poetry Review: Expanding the Power of Verse — The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry
One feels when reading this anthology of Latin American poetry that editor Ilan Stavans tucks each poet he features into a folder, but that this categorization, while limiting, also encourages an English-speaking readership to appreciate the eye-opening diversity of Latin American poetry.
Poetry Review: Ghassan Zaqtan’s Haunting Poetics of Suspension
The poetry of Palestinian author Ghassan Zaqtan dwells in the space between life and death, memory and erasure, respite and continuous travel.
Poetry Review: Poet D. A. Powell Redeems the Wasteland
In D. A. Powell’s latest volume, the dominant landscape is that of the wasting body, which is crisscrossed, investigated, confronted, and made useful again as a map in the hands of raw youth.