BlogFlockEllen Levy
The MIT Press ($54.95)
By far the most complete framing of coyote trickster artist Ray Johnson (1927-1995) to date, Ellen Levy’s A Book About Ray engages with the work of the artist on his own terms, or at least as approximate to them as…
City Pages | Wednesday, September 17, 2008 by Ed Huyck
It's a common story in the arts. Young, fresh, and brash group hits the scene, be it a band or a theater company, a visual arts group or a magazine. The group burns white hot for a time—six months, a…
but if you had heard of it, you'd really enjoy reading it, which is why this unusual book review, Rain Taxi, continues to exist against what truly are the longest of odds
by Keith Harris
To reach the office, you've got to duck. Yes, that means you,…
by Jim Feast
A mainstay of the New York literary scene since the late 1980s, Elaine Equi is known as a writer of aphoristic wit, philosophical depth, and visual precision. Her many books include Voice-Over (1999), which won the San Francisco State Poetry Award; Ripple Effect: New & Selected Poems
by Jim Feast
A mainstay of the New York literary scene since the late 1980s, Elaine Equi is known as a writer of aphoristic wit, philosophical depth, and visual precision. Her many books include Voice-Over (1999), which won the San Francisco State Poetry Award; Ripple Effect: New & Selected Poems
Edited by Emanuele Guidi and Egidio Marzona, with text by Lisa Andreani, Jordan Carter, Luca Cerizza, Allison Grimaldi Donahue, Emanuele Guidi, Henry Martin, and Elisabetta Rattalino
Spector Books ($45)
The remarkable African American art critic, curator, and translator Henry Martin, who died…
Bret Shepard
University of Pittsburgh Press ($18)
Bret Shepard’s second collection, Absent Here, could be called a “project” book, in that all its poems are centered on one topic—in this case Alaska, which here seems less a state than a state of mind. Tundra, darkness, Arctic,…
Jean Giono
Translated by Paul Eprile
Archipelago Books ($18)
Long before dictating the eight chapters of Fragments of a Paradise, Jean Giono spent three years translating Herman Melville’s Moby Dick; during World War II, he pursued this nautical theme with an homage to its author,
Alexei Navalny
Translated by Arch Tait and Stephen Dalziel
Knopf ($35)
by Grace Utomo
For some, the difference between what if and what is is a single character. For others, it’s the gulf between silence and annihilation. Alexei Navalny, intrepid critic of Vladimir Putin and leader of Russia’s Anti-Corruption Foundation,…
Léon-Paul Fargue
Translated by Rainer J. Hanshe
Contra Mundum Press ($21.50)
Picture dragging yourself from bed with mounting anxiety in a small and dingy (yet Parisian, so not all bad) flat to the windows overlooking a boulevard and adjacent alleyways abuzz with city life. Looking out…