In her paramedic training, Ieva Jusionyte was told, when dealing with gunshot victims, to “always look for the exit wound.” Exit wounds are larger and more irregular than entry wounds, and their location helps medical workers
The notion of “the good war”—a just, nationwide effort against an obvious and perilous aggressor—pulses through Matt Gallagher’s latest novel, Daybreak (Simon & Schuster, Feb 20, 2024). This notion has perhaps been freshly reinstated in American public discourse,
Farewell ValleyBy Im Ch’ŏru, translated from the Korean by Jennifer M. Lee and Jonathan R. Bagley (MerwinAsia, 2016) Readers new to Korean literature who value historical memory as a gateway to truth, reconciliation, and healing
Today is a Different WarBy Lyudmyla Khersonska, translations by Olga Livshin, Andrew Janco, Maya Chhabra, and Lev Fridman (Arrowsmith Press, 2023). In the Hour of War: Poetry from UkraineEdited by Carolyn Forché and Ilya Kaminsky,
The January 6 Select Congressional Committee released its final report on December 22, 2022. The report is the culmination of the ten hearings the nation has witnessed on television from June through December at intervals.
The King’s TouchTom SleighGraywolf Press 2022 For years, Tom Sleigh was a Boston poet, a Cambridge poet, and he made poems that seemed associated with the interpretive and bookish spirit of those places, writing poems
The Neverending Quest for the Other Shore: An Epic in Three CantosSylvie KandéTranslated by Alexander DickowWesleyan University Press, 2022 Sylvie Kandé’s epic poem, The Neverending Quest for the Other Shore, describes two journeys over water
Maybe the Land Sings BackBy Jan LaPerleGalileo Books, 2022 Jan LaPerle’s latest poetry collection, Maybe the Land Sings Back, begins and is interspersed with sheet music for Charles Wesley’s 1739 hymn “O for a Thousand
Cartography: Navigating a Year in IraqKatherine SchifaniPotomac Books, June 2022 The year is 2011, the United States is in the final stages of its two-year withdrawal from Iraq, and Katherine Schifani has been deployed with
Fajront u SarajevuDr Nele KarajlićLaguna, 2015 Often when people hear the name “Yugoslavia,” they recognize it because of the war, or wars, of the 1990s. Another case of Communism, of ethnic and religious hate, of
Flight and Metamorphosis: PoemsNelly SachsTranslated by Joshua Weiner with Linda B. ParshallFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022 Although I am usually wary of presentism, the too-easy application of historical situations to current contexts, I find that
My DeniversityMark PawlakMadHat Press, 2021 On the back cover of My Deniversity, Mark Pawlak’s memoir of his long apprenticeship in poetry to Denise Levertov, the novelist and critic Askold Melnyczuk compares the book to Pound’s
