Books
Poet José Ángel Valente deeply considered what kind of lyricism remains legitimate; that is, truthful, not deceptive; a song that moves us to truth, not a Siren’s song.
“No Hurry” is a book about aging: the conscious pang of the loss of past intensities, the treasuring of the quieter now, the achingly slow death of sex.
Though its central events are in the past, conveyed by characters by means of often ambiguous shreds of memory and musing, “In Times of Fading Light” is a work of quiet power and beauty, dense with sorrow, telling detail, and suspense.
Rachel Hadas’ poems present deceptively calm surfaces, like a lake that hides its rich inner life beneath bright reflections of clouds and blue sky.
It may be only a movie, but in his book “Film after Film,” former Village Voice writer J. Hoberman proves he isn’t just a movie critic.
While I believe that merely publishing these days is an act of entrepreneurial legerdemain, I direct you to a pair of Canadian poets who have gone one step beyond.
Director Peter Jackson in his film adaptation of The Hobbit abandons the intimate scale of the original wonder tale and mistakenly blows it up into mythic proportions.
Antonio Tabucchi’s “travel book” transcends conventional literary forms: his stories occupy an attractive space between fiction and non-fiction, poetry, biography, short story and journalistic travel piece.
This translation of “Poems of Consummation” is important for several reasons, one of which is that the 1977 Nobel prizewinner—despite the award—has long been insufficiently preeminent in our Anglo-American view of twentieth-century Spanish poetry.
This fascinating book ends, leaving the reader with all sorts of questions — but that is exactly what really good fiction always does. Opening our minds, etching characters in our imaginations, and generating all sorts of possibilities.
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