Quill and Quire

Poetry

★ The Xenotext: Book I

By Christian Bök

At first glance, the seventh collection from Carolyn Smart and the highly anticipated new work of conceptual poetry from Christian Bök share little in common. The former is a suite of narrative poems that retell ... Read More »

November 17, 2015 | Filed under: Poetry

★ Regeneration Machine

By Joe Denham

“Who’s there?” Bernardo asks as Shakespeare’s Hamlet begins. The opening passage of Joe Denham’s Regeneration Machine inhabits that same sort of night, as the ghost of Nevin Sample makes a visitation. From the publisher’s cover ... Read More »

November 10, 2015 | Filed under: Poetry

A Revision of Forward

By Wendy McGrath

More than 10 years in the making, Wendy McGrath’s A Revision of Forward is the outcome of a collaboration with printmaker Walter Jule. The finished product is a collection of near-mirror poems that at times ... Read More »

November 10, 2015 | Filed under: Poetry

Mayor Snow

By Nick Thran

Nick Thran is a poet who makes trouble. He makes trouble both for language and the power relationships language mirrors. Thran works under the umbrella of James Tate, alongside surrealist post-Tate troublemakers on both the ... Read More »

November 10, 2015 | Filed under: Poetry

Niche

By Basma Kavanagh

“In an extinction event of our own making, what happens to us?” asks journalist and Williams College professor Elizabeth Kolbert in the concluding pages of her 2014 Pulitzer Prize–winning book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural ... Read More »

November 10, 2015 | Filed under: Poetry

Entrainment

By Ewan Whyte

Laura Clarke’s witty romp, Decline of the Animal Kingdom, helped her win the 2013 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers (when the selections were called Mule Variations). In her debut collection, she ruminates on ... Read More »

October 15, 2015 | Filed under: Poetry

Decline of the Animal Kingdom

By Laura Clarke

Laura Clarke’s witty romp, Decline of the Animal Kingdom, helped her win the 2013 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers (when the selections were called Mule Variations). In her debut collection, she ruminates on ... Read More »

October 15, 2015 | Filed under: Poetry

A Serious Call

By Don Coles

In the opening paragraph of A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729), from which Don Coles has drawn the title of his new poetry collection, William Law writes that “Devotion signifies a ... Read More »

June 25, 2015 | Filed under: Poetry