I read an advanced copy of Ben Kline’s It Was Never Supposed to Be mere days after the 2024 presidential election was called. Meanwhile, pundits and journalists were stumbling over themselves to analyze results they…
Browsing Category Interviews/Reviews
Feed the Machine: An Interview with Benjamin Kessler
Benjamin Kessler’s novella The Pinnacle is set in a near-future version of New York City that feels uncomfortably close to our present moment. In it, our unnamed narrator spends weeklong shifts in The Pinnacle, the…
A Review of Eschatology in Crayon Wax
“Let my worship / be this work / and the force / of each bit / strike / on masonry”. And so, begins Joshua Robbins’ latest collection of poetry, Eschatology in Crayon Wax. With such…
A Review of Slow Render by Jess Yuan
Jess Yuan’s Slow Render–winner of the 2022 Airlie Prize for poetry–is situated in a pre-post-truth world where capitalism, imperialism, and technology are still calculable and grieved on human terms, at a human scale. With the…
Don’t Teach Me Nonsense: A Review of Holy American Burnout: Essays by Sean Enfield
Balancing personal truths against the raw realities of American society can seem impossible in today’s political climate, where ideas about truth and justice often feel up for debate, and an issue’s relevancy seems determined by…