Interview with Jennifer Moxley

An interview with poet and University of Maine professor Jennifer Moxley on the politics of poetry and her new book of poems Clampdown published in the New Haven Advocate and syndicated in the Hartford Advocate and Fairfield County Weekly.

Marriage-Go-Round, briefly reviewed

An incredibly short review of a complex book called The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today by Andrew Cherlin published in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

On Charles D’Ambrosio

A piece on Charles D’Ambrosio’s Dead Fish Museum for the Pittsburgh City Paper.

If I were to ask Charles D’Ambrosio, the acclaimed author whose short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review and other esteemed journals of literary writing, one question, it might be this: Are you OK?

Seriously. You might want to see a doctor. Get a second opinion. Take something for that. I just read his most recent collection, The Dead Fish Museum, and pretty much in every one, swaddled around a still-beating but congestive heart, is a broken soul.

In the title story, the down-and-out Ramage is a carpenter for a low-rent pornographer. He’s spent time convalescing in a hospital for reasons unclear. He carries around a tool sack at the bottom of which is a gun. After the job is done, he plans to finish it. Meanwhile, his boss wants his S&M bondage flick to quote Citizen Kane.

Full story . . .

Eternal Enemies, reviewed

A review of Adam Zagajewski’s wonderful volume, Eternal Enemies, published in the Pittsburgh City Paper.

The Spartacus War

I interview Barry Strauss, the military historian and author of The Spartacus War. This is published in Creative Loafing Atlanta.

Strauss recognizes the rebellion as one of the most successful insurgencies in world history, and finds some intriguing parallels between it and the United States’ War on Terror.

Full story . . .

An interview with Jed Purdy

Published in the Independent:

“Everyone before [Reagan] said that people can’t be the authors of their own lives,” Purdy says. “The role of government was to create order out of disorder, so that if we can’t control these forces alone, we can together. Reagan rejected what was a consensus for most of the 20th century.”

Full story . . .

The naked truth about women …

… according to a nude photographer working in Charleston. Ed Coyle says all women possess beauty; you just have to wait for it to appear sometimes. This was published in the Charleston City Paper.

How to Be Perfect, reviewed

A review of Ron Padgett’s new-ish book of poems, How to Be Perfect, published in the Pittsburgh City Paper. —John Stoehr

Herbert Hoover, reviewed

A review of William E. Leuchtenburg’s brief but fulsome biography of Herbert Hoover published in the New Haven Review. —John Stoehr

December, a novel

A review of Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop’s second novel, December, published in Creative Loafing Atlanta. —John Stoehr