Focus: First Fictions — May-June 2002

First Fictions

Volume 23 Number 4
May-June 2002

FOCUS: First Fictions

Introduction: First Fictions
Charles B. Harris

Bait and Switch
Christopher Coake reviews The Impossibly by Laird Hunt

Roach Redux
Robert L. McLaughlin reviews Insect Dreams: The Half Life of Gregor Samsa by Marc Estrin

Writing Laboratory
Melissa Studdard reviews In the Shadow of Our House by Scott Blackwood

Death in Life
Keith Byerman reviews Sap Rising by Christine Lincoln

That Heavy Purple Feeling
Chris Lombardi reviews Jobs & Other Preoccupations by Daniel Coshnear

FEATURE: Poets and Poetics

Much Ado about Warring Poetics
Steve Tomasula reviews Spin Cycle: Selected Essays and Reviews (1989-1999) by Chris Stroffolino

With Companions Like This, Who Needs Enemies?
Bob Blaisdell reviews The Sappho Companion edited by Margaret Reynolds

The Edge of the Knowable
Robert Baker reviews The Body of This Life: Reading William Bronk edited by David Clippinger

Poetry and/as Ecstasy
Nina Zivancevic reviews Vow to Poetry: Essays, Interviews, & Manifestos by Anne Waldman

FEATURE: Mothers

Mother Writers
Angelynn King reviews Mother Reader: Essential Writings on Motherhood edited by Moyra Davey

Baby Steps
Margaret Quamme reviews Milk by Emily Hammond and Rousseau’s Garden by Ann Charney

FEATURE: New/Collected/Selected

Domestic Spirituality
Linda Wagner-Martin reviews Journey: New and Selected Poems, 1969-1999 by Kathleen Norris

Brutal Mercy
David Baker reviews The Mercy Seat: Collected & New Poems, 1967-2001 by Norman Dubie

Naming the Soul
Robert Buttel reviews Song of the World Becoming: New and Collected Poems, 1981-2001 by Pattiann Rogers

Book Reviews

Imagined Possibilities
Elaine Equi reviews Here There Was Once a Country by Vénus Khoury-Ghata and A Long-Gone Sun by Claire Malroux

Lone Star Lit
Rob Johnson reviews Islands, Women, and God by Paul Ruffin

Hey, I’m Fragmentary
Thomas Fink reviews On the Nameways, Volume Two by Clark Coolidge

A Tale of Hyenas, Toddlers, and Edith Wharton Scholars
Julie Sparks reviews Death of a Prof: The Nursery School Murders, II by Jake Fuchs

Divine Discontent
Cheryl Harris Sharman reviews The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon

The Right Touch
John Olson reviews Gone to Earth by Pam Rehm

Tradition and the Individual Talent
Bob Grumman reviews Savage Baggage by Roger Mitchell

Reflected Glory
Charles Marowitz reviews Boswell’s Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson by Adam Sisman

Everything Everywhere All the Time
Fred Muratori reviews Drive through the Blue Cylinders by Ed Friedman

New York Bile
Jimmy Jazz reviews Heart of the Old Country by Tim McLoughlin

Powers of Weirdness
Mike Chasar reviews Saving Lives by Albert Goldbarth

All Filler, No Killer
Robert Long reviews Memoir of the Hawk by James Tate

Poems that Earn Our Trust
Marilyn Kallet reviews The Forest of Wild Hands by Judy Rowe Michaels

Poetic Order
Catherine Daly reviews The Vulnerability of Order by Martine Bellen

The Face behind the Face
Corinne Robins reviews Luca: Discourse on Life and Death by Rochelle Owens

By Paths of Light
Jason Weiss reviews The Heart Is Katmandu by Yoel Hoffmann

A Place to Stand
Margot Farrington reviews In Houses with Ladders: New Poems by Roberta Gould

The Inland Sea
Robin Magowan reviews The Donald Richie Reader: 50 Years of Writing on Japan edited by Arturo Silva

Quelle Catastrophe!
Kreg Hasegawa reviews The Hesperides Tree by Nicholas Mosley

Departments

Rants and Raves
Letters to the Editor