Every now and then I run across a poem so tasty I’m greedy for more by the same poet, which is how I felt after finding Rob Carney’s prize winning “Seven Pages from The Book of Sharks” on terrain.org. The poem tells a wholly invented myth of sharks […]
by Krystal K. Baker Rennie’s dad is dead, and with his death, the life she’s known shrugs from her shoulders like a worn coat. Devastated and confused by the incidents surrounding his mysterious death, she is just as devastated by her father’s exit from her life as she […]
In a recent article, The Salt Lake Tribune said Mormon mysteries have become a hot new genre, with Mette Ivie Harrison’s 2014 national bestseller The Bishop’s Wife leading the pack. Her second in the Linda Wallheim series, “set in Mormon Utah,“ however, offers little mystery and a lot […]
In the beginning was the word, and in it, revealed, through its fullness, the possibility of both blasphemy and redemption. Both/and. Because Mormonism is a vast tent, and also an unbalanced one, most of its stakes on one side. Less and more active, perfection and atonement, sexual […]
The ”Sediment” in the title of this book of poems is radioactive dust blown downwind from nuclear explosions at the Nevada Test Site; the “Veil” is a Mormon symbol that represents the separation between God and man, but also, according to the LDS.org website, “a God-given forgetfulness that […]
To the Mountain: One Mormon Woman’s Search for Spirit (Quest Books, 2014)) By Phyllis Barber Reviewed by Jake Clayson Given the chance to read Phyllis Barber’s To the Mountain: One Mormon Woman’s Search for Spirit before I served as a Mormon missionary on the Saddle Lake Indian […]
Meg Day’s debut collection of poems, Last Psalm at Sea Level reveals the realities, at base, of the scientific age in which we find ourselves located: the clash between a quantum and a classical mechanical understanding of nature. That is to say, we can no longer situate […]
David Lee will be reading and discussing his work, including the book reviewed below, at four different sites in Utah during October as part of the Utah Humanities Book Festival: 10/8 at the SLC Public Library (4th floor) in partnership with City Arts (with poet Gailmarie Pahmeier); […]
Linda Sillitoe. How good to see her name again on the cover of this posthumous novel, The Thieves of Summer. Many personal and professional memories of this outstanding journalist surfaced for me while reading the newly published recognition of her writing achievement. In somewhat eerie fashion, this book not […]
We are pleased to announced that Paisley Rekdal’s Animal Eye, from the University of Pittsburgh Press, has been selected for the 2013 15 Bytes Book Award in Poetry. Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’s But a Storm Is Blowing From Paradise by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, published by Red Hen Press, and House Under […]
The phrase “taking care of your genetic material” first appears in Kirsten Scott’s smart debut novel Motherlunge through a father talking warningly to his son as the son begins to date seriously. But in the gynecological world of this novel where the female body is relentlessly inscribed […]
Intimate Moments of Subdued Watching In 1844, Ralph Waldo Emerson published his essay “The Poet” in which he called for an American poet to celebrate the distinctly American materials not before utilized as ingredients for a high national poetry. Emerson knew that the landscapes, the religions, the politics, […]
As I read one of the stories about halfway through David Kranes’ new collection, The Legend’s Daughter, I became lost in the language: the tangents, the circle-rounds, the free-form understated bombast. I started to wonder if I might need whiskey flowing in my veins to understand the narrative, to […]
In the wake of a spate of articles and rebuttals on the “death” and usefulness of poetry, on its accessibility, and other catalysts of infighting amongst schools of poets, Lance Larsen’s new collection, Genius Loci, came as welcome relief. Many of Larsen’s poems transcend such specialization and erudition. They are […]
Painters of Utah’s Canyons & Deserts, a collaboration of art historians Donna L. Poulton and Vern G. Swanson, is a wonderfully written and illustrated book about artists painting the southern Utah landscape. The book is a suitable companion to other publications about Utah art and artists, the previous […]
Towards the end of his new book, Talking to Tesla: An Artist’s Dream Journal, Alex Bigny writes: “Imagine me, the consummate dreamer, a painter, encountering a great scientist somewhere in the ethers — to be told that I would carry on his work. I had expected by now that I […]
