Things not to do: read Mark Levine’s Sound Fury while battling a nasty rhinovirus. Here’s why: Levine (deftly) uses so many literary devices simultaneously that one really needs the full use of their faculties to experience Sound Fury (University of […]
Mackie Garrett, founder of Iowa City’s 508 Press, started taking classes on the letterpress after receiving an invitation to an event at Public Space One by a colleague. “I was at a point with professional changes where I felt a […]
Madhushree Ghosh returned to California from Belgium on Friday and will fly to Iowa this week to be the featured presenter at the 16th annual Examined Life Conference, hosted by the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver […]
Searching for Petco (Forklift Books, 2022) opens like someone suddenly turned on a speaker. I felt accosted by author Skylar Alexander’s opening poems: clearly meant to be spoken, clearly friends with slam poetry. Extra-sensory and openly branded “millennial.” Alexander brazenly […]
Iowa City Poetry’s Mic Check Poetry Festival will return Nov. 11-12 after organizers Caleb “The Negro Artist” Rainey and Lisa Roberts received what Rainey called a “phenomenal showing” of support and enthusiasm last year. The November festival will be only […]
When I started reading All This Could Be Different (Viking, 2022) by Sarah Thankam Mathews, I was nervous about the passive voice, tonally similar to other books I’ve recently read which I felt lacked substance. But this is intentional. Our […]
Written as a calendar documenting March through October, a single narrator moves through life in lockdown in L.A. Felleman’s The Length of a Clenched Fist (Finishing Line Press). If I hadn’t lived through 2020 I might not understand references like […]
Formulaic poetry seems to be simultaneously under- and overrated, something force-fed us by teachers and then never seen again — as though only the archaic men of our textbooks were allowed to use the respective forms. Truthfully, formulaic poems have […]
In Memento Vivere (Cabin Bear Books), a tiny volume of rebellion against death, Cedar Rapids poet Laura Johnson creates a still life of delights and damages reminding both herself and the reader: Remember you must live. (For those missing the […]
River Action — a Davenport nonprofit that, per their mission statement, works to “foster the environmental, economic and cultural vitality” of the Quad City riverfront — is premiering their 2022 QC Environmental Film Series on Sunday, Jan. 23 at the […]
Midwinter Constellation (Black Lawrence Press) is the collaborative effort of 32 poets paying homage to Midwinter Day, by Bernadette Mayer, on the 40th anniversary of its creation. It is the brainchild of editor Becca Klaver who states in the afterword […]
In December 2016, Adam “Higgy” Higgins and Mike Derer held the first Northern Parallels event. This was before the record label, before the event promotion, before the series of dance parties. “It was a crazy night, the weather wasn’t in […]
