TLR Delivers a Stellar Review of GIRLS LIKE US
Michael Quinn of TLR traces the arc of Elizabeth Hazen's new collection "The Last Girl" and discovers the ways in which "Absence asserts permanence."
A new review this week from The Literary Review traces the arc of Elizabeth Hazen's Girls Like Us from a "[focus] primarily on the self, [to] poems [that] are gradually consumed by a responsibility to others, primarily through motherhood and its all-consuming need to provide for and protect."
Motherhood, womanhood, girlhood, addiction, and identity all present themselves in different ways throughout this arc, and Brooklyn-based reviewer Michael Quinn deals deftly with each of them, analyzing bits and pieces of many poems which tell the story of Girls Like Us rather than lingering too long on one or two images. In doing so, Quinn is able to depict Girls Like Us as a book that refuses pigeon-holing and which dares to be complicated and often difficult.
This dedication is evident in Quinn's description of the cover of the collection, a collage by Lindsay Fleming, "Near the girl’s feet, a book lies on the ground with its pages blown open. An adventure awaits: dangerous, scary, exciting, confusing." And, in a more detailed way, it is evident in Quinn's short but revealing analyses of the Hazen's Diagnosis cycle:
'“Diagnosis I,” “Diagnosis II,” and “Diagnosis III” respectively depict three scenes. In the first, an unwell woman is assured by her male doctor that despite her undiagnosed source of pain, there’s nothing wrong with her. In the second, a young virgin’s group of male tormentors becomes her booze-supplying seducers. In the third, the past of a woman at midlife is thrown into relief when a drunk aggressively hits on her. “Girls like / you, he repeated, leaving me / a blank to fill.”'
Independent Bookstore Day: What do the Indies Offer?
“Amid Amazon’s economic hegemony, amid the wholesale abandonment of big-box stores around the country, amid the strange, unpredicted resurgence of vinyl record collecting, and amid the general economic turmoil in the American printed news media we have, sitting in the room-corner upon a large leather chair, drinking tea, nose nestled cozily in the pages of Du Bois, the indie bookstore question. For what purpose does an indie bookstore exist in the age of digital media and online book sales?”
An Interview with “Roughnecks” Author, James J. Patterson
Recently, James J. Patterson sat down with fellow author, Branka Cubrilo, for her blog. They spoke on Patterson’s most recent novel, Roughnecks, his old band “The Pheromones,” whose style Patterson warmly refers to as “pop-friendly cabaret”, his favorite author, Henry Miller, and many other diverse topics.
Grace Cavalieri among 13 Poets Laureate to Receive over $1 million in Grant Money
Big news for Maryland’s Poet Laureate, Grace Cavalieri. The American Academy of poets announced on Wednesday that an appropriation of $1,050,000 (made possible by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation) would be made available for thirteen of America’s most distinguished Poets Laureate including Grace herself…