Books

Book Review: “The Poets’ Wives” — What Does it Mean to be Married to a Poet?

May 23, 2014
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Taken as a whole, “The Poets’ Wives” is a fascinating, brave novel whose love of poetry breathes through all three sections.

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Arts Remembrance: Polish Poet and Dramatist Tadeusz Różewicz — The Prophet of the Partial, the Herald of the Unfinished

May 22, 2014
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Tadeusz Różewicz’s best poems are blunt hammer strokes that pound at the impossibility of crafting poetry true to the sins of history.

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Book Review: “The Star of Istanbul” — A Literary Historical Thriller

May 21, 2014
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Robert Olen Butler chose his protagonist wisely. Christopher Marlowe Cobb is a man of both intellect and physicality, of thought and action.

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Book Review: “A Place in the Country” — A Heady Tour of W.G. Sebald Country

May 15, 2014
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It seems deeply appropriate that a superb book of essays by W.G. Sebald about his favorite writers should be his swan song.

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Poetry Review: Translations of Two Wild Russian Poets, Their Flair Restored

May 14, 2014
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New translations of Soviet-era poets Vladimir Mayakovsky and Vladislav Khodasevich ask us to restore them to their rightful places in Russian and international literature .

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Book Review: “The Democratic Surround” — Exploring the Makings of Mass Experience

May 10, 2014
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Fred Turner’s counterintuitive and subtle argument in The Democratic Surround draws a direct line between the design of museum exhibitions and the Be-Ins of the Summer of Love.

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Arts Commentary: Who’s Afraid Of James Baldwin?

May 5, 2014
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So what we have is a failure of nerve — a reluctance to make students grapple with the considerable demands of James Baldwin’s prose and sensibility.

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Fuse Book Interview: James Shapiro on America’s Complicated Relationship With Shakespeare

May 1, 2014
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“Americans have been most drawn to the great tragedies—in our classroom and on our stages. “

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Book Review: An Informative Tour of Randy Revolutionary Times

April 30, 2014
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This book is a valuable reminder that “the men associated with an era of supposed morality and Christian values of monogamy and marriage have nearly all been linked to infidelity and sex outside of wedlock.”

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Author Interview: Novelist Elizabeth Graver on “The End of the Point”

April 29, 2014
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“The space between fantasy and reality is a very charged one. Fiction can explore that, which might be one reason why I’m so drawn to it as a form.”

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