A Review of Divine Blue Light (for John Coltrane) by Will Alexander (City Lights (Pocket Poets Series, 63), 2022) Some poets, the best among them, make you learn to read their work. Sure, some structures and narratives inform their poems, but these are not familiar ones (the pentameter line, the regular stanza, the myths . . .
Read MoreI hear you’re having a sober October?That option, for me, is a Noper.But for you I’ve pursuedAn assortment of brewsSo your boozeless pursuits can be proper. 1.Translucent, refreshing, and lightIs this Upside Dawn Golden. So bright-ly concocted it zipsAs it passes your lipsWith a fizz on your tongue that delights. 2.Just the Haze is . . .
Read MoreCalvino fa la conchiglia [Calvino/Italo Calvinomakes/does/imitatesa/theseashell/shell/spirals] La costruzione di uno scrittore [The making/building/construction of a writer] Editor’s note: To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Italo Calvino on October 15, 2023, the journal California Italian Studies has published a special issue, edited by Anna Botta and Lucia Re, titled Calvino’s Memos: Between the Old . . .
Read MoreA Review of House Parties by Lynn Levin (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023) Lynn Levin’s debut collection of short fiction, House Parties, offers the wisdom and humor of a keen eye and a kind heart. An accomplished poet, Levin, author of five collections of her own poetry and one volume of translation, also writes beautiful prose so . . .
Read MoreA Review of The Sea Elephants by Shastri Akella (Flatiron Books, 2023) “Once upon a time,” reads sixteen-year-old protagonist Shagun in a book of Hindu myths at the outset of Shastri Akella’s earnest and aching debut novel, The Sea Elephants, “the gods took away the first ancestor of the sea elephants, coveting him for his . . .
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