Iron Horse Literary Review
Spring 2001 Book Reviews
|
The Old Ballerina Ellen Cooney In The Old Ballerina, Ellen Cooney approaches the subject of the creative process through the voices of people who have known Mrs. Kamsky, a grotesque character straight out of the Russian school of dance. The juxtaposition is wonderful: the "old ballerina" retires to the suburbs, builds a studio on the back of a ranch-style house, and seeks out then molds young dancers into a greatness that has passed her by. Life is a performance. . . |
|
Riffs and Reciprocities: Prose Pairs
Stephen Dunn. New York: Norton, 1998. $12.00
In his 1998 collection, Riffs and Reciprocities: Prose Pairs, Stephen Dunn continues to build on his legacy of quality writing, this time exhibiting both his talent for prose poems and a creative and effective strategy for arranging them. The book consists of three parts, each containing roughly fifteen pairs of tightly focused prose paragraphs on facing pages. The result is a powerful pattern of reciprocal associations not only within the prose pairs but also between them. Dunn characterizes...
Then Suddenly--
Lynn Emanuel. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburg Press, 1999. $25.00 cloth; $12.95 paper
The title of Lynn Emanuel's newest book, Then, Suddenly--, hands in the air like a tantalizing snippet of overheard conversation. We're not sure what's going on yet, but this short phrase, just two ordinary words, promises action, story, and tension. This, it says, is the narrative's pivotal point; pay attention; something significant is about to happen. Gunshots? Hurricane? A harrowing, ear-splitting scream? We're just waiting to find out. . .
|
|
Contagion and Other Stories Brian Evenson. La Grande: Wordcraft, 2000. $11.00 Brian Evenson's Contagion and Other Stories is an intense journey of exploration to a fourth-dimensional frontier. Evenson delves deep into the realm of the unconscious mind, exposing nightmares. His imagery is stark, surreal, beautiful in the way of deadly things. The eight stories collected here transplant history, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology into a literary landscape both fascinating and bizarre. Readers looking for more in the veing of Altmann's Tongue will not be disappointed . . . |
|
The Way the Family Got Away Michael Kimball. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000. $12.95 In Michael Kimball's The Way the Family Got Away, the landscape of grief is a long barren one where the object for adults is to survive. For children, however, the object is to understand what they experience. At the beginning of the novel, we learn that the family has lost their youngest son, a baby from a fever. Grief-stricken, the mother and father decide to move from Mineola, Texas, to the house of a parent in Michigan. They take the baby and put him in . . . |
|
|
|
In the Century of Small Gestures Robert J. Levy. Warwick, New York: Defined Providence Press, 2000. $8.00 Robert J. Levy's In the Century of Small Gestures offers readers a chance to explore old themes and concepts through a new eye. Levy's refreshing approach toward recording life has created some powerful and, oftentimes, humorous pieces. The collection is separated into three different sections. The first set of poems deals with relationships. Sometimes the relationship discussed is with the speaker's father, as in "The Voice." Other times . . . |
|
Spinach Days Robert Phillips. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000. $19.95 With his selection of the two epigraphs introducing Spinach Days, Robert Phillips indicates what is to come. The first quote is one from Shakespeare: "My salad days, / When I was green in judgment." In Spinach Days, Phillips writes of past experiences, and his playfulness in the change of word from "salad" to "spinach" prepares the reader for the poet's sense of delight with words that pervades his collection. Even though the focus of his poems is often about younger, less experienced days . . . |
|
Click here to see excerpts from this issue of Iron Horse.
All of these books except Robert J. Levy's
In the Century of Small Gestures are available at Amazon.com
Click the image below of the book you want
and you will be redirected to it's location.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
