Book Reviews – Page 2 – Michigan Quarterly Review

Book Reviews

The cover of Jennifer Grotz's "Still Falling: Poems" set over a black-orange background.

Language Plays God: A review of Hypergraphia and Other Failed Attempts at Paradise by Jennifer Metsker

In Hypergraphia and Other Failed Attempts at Paradise, Jennifer Metsker gives us over to a mind that makes and unmakes the world. Metsker’s speaker revels in sensory experience even as she troubles the notion that one’s senses are a pathway to truth. While the speaker leads us through a vivid landscape of dead pets and […]

Language Plays God: A review of Hypergraphia and Other Failed Attempts at Paradise by Jennifer Metsker Read More »

In Hypergraphia and Other Failed Attempts at Paradise, Jennifer Metsker gives us over to a mind that makes and unmakes the world. Metsker’s speaker revels in sensory experience even as she troubles the notion that one’s senses are a pathway to truth. While the speaker leads us through a vivid landscape of dead pets and

The book covers of "If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English" and "A Film in Which I Play Everyone", and the film poster of "Barbie" set against a yellow-pink background

On Perspective: Mary Jo Bang’s A Film in Which I Play Everyone, the Barbie movie, & Noor Naga’s If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English

Vanishing point: the point or points in a work of art at which imaginary sight lines appear to converge, suggesting depth Q: Who is the speaker?  A: The poet? Me? You? Us? The title of Mary Jo Bang’s new book (Graywolf, 2023) is a David Bowie quote, but I keep thinking of the Velvet Underground

On Perspective: Mary Jo Bang’s A Film in Which I Play Everyone, the Barbie movie, & Noor Naga’s If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English Read More »

Vanishing point: the point or points in a work of art at which imaginary sight lines appear to converge, suggesting depth Q: Who is the speaker?  A: The poet? Me? You? Us? The title of Mary Jo Bang’s new book (Graywolf, 2023) is a David Bowie quote, but I keep thinking of the Velvet Underground

The cover of Boris Dralyuk's "My Hollywood and Other Poems" set over a blue-green background.

In with the Old: Boris Dralyuk’s My Hollywood and Other Poems

As in the Hollywood of the last century, Boris Dralyuk’s debut collection features bankrupt dive bars, washed-up starlets (“Nothing was ever / quite the same. // Every one came / to be another”), the odd fruit stall, balding palm trees, and Igor Stravinsky. Dralyuk is the former editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books,

In with the Old: Boris Dralyuk’s My Hollywood and Other Poems Read More »

As in the Hollywood of the last century, Boris Dralyuk’s debut collection features bankrupt dive bars, washed-up starlets (“Nothing was ever / quite the same. // Every one came / to be another”), the odd fruit stall, balding palm trees, and Igor Stravinsky. Dralyuk is the former editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books,

The cover of Tori Amos Bootleg Webring set against a bright pink-purple background.

Where the Music Plays: On “Tori Amos Bootleg Webring” by Megan Milks and Locating Queer and Trans Identity in Online Fandom’s Archives

Megan Milks traces the origins of their queer and trans identity in a coming of age memoir about trading Tori Amos bootlegs at the dawn of the internet age. Anyone who logged onto the internet in the mid-nineties, whether through AOL or a service like CompuServe or Prodigy, engaged in the practice of authoring oneself.

Where the Music Plays: On “Tori Amos Bootleg Webring” by Megan Milks and Locating Queer and Trans Identity in Online Fandom’s Archives Read More »

Megan Milks traces the origins of their queer and trans identity in a coming of age memoir about trading Tori Amos bootlegs at the dawn of the internet age. Anyone who logged onto the internet in the mid-nineties, whether through AOL or a service like CompuServe or Prodigy, engaged in the practice of authoring oneself.

Book cover over an abstract dark greenish background

A Loud Grief: A Review of Onyi Nwabineli’s Someday, Maybe

“Death in general elicits questions, the most invasive of which is how?” writes Onyi Nwabineli in Someday, Maybe. Eve Ezenwa-Morrow, the novel’s protagonist, has lost her husband, Quentin Morrow, to suicide. After his death on an undated New Year’s Eve, she is so pinioned by the resulting grief that a new persona emerges: an “Eve

A Loud Grief: A Review of Onyi Nwabineli’s Someday, Maybe Read More »

“Death in general elicits questions, the most invasive of which is how?” writes Onyi Nwabineli in Someday, Maybe. Eve Ezenwa-Morrow, the novel’s protagonist, has lost her husband, Quentin Morrow, to suicide. After his death on an undated New Year’s Eve, she is so pinioned by the resulting grief that a new persona emerges: an “Eve

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