New review of Shelly Taylor's Black-Eyed Heifer

Good news for the uninitiated: At Prick of the Spindle, Eric Weinstein reviews Shelly Taylor's Black-Eyed Heifer.

Says Weinstein, "Reminiscent of Tony Tost’s Invisible Bride, Taylor’s poems evoke the quotidian without becoming banal, carrying the reader through dreamlike forests and fields. . . . Whether eclogue, pastoral, or idyll, Shelly Taylor’s poems turn her audience’s attention to a new poetics of place and carve out a marvelously hybridized space in contemporary American poetry."

Click here for the full review. 

Reviews

duncan b. barlow reviews TSky publisher Christian Peet's Pluto: Never Forget (Interbirth Books, 2010) at SeenAllOver.com.

I won’t go so far as to say that Peet has a working class agenda, that he views the academic world with contempt; however, I will say that he seems to have a sensitivity to this in his writing. . . . Considering that Peet’s work is, in the broader scale of today’s publishing “norms,” regarded as experimental (a label too easily tossed about as a term of endearment or dismissal), his fiction is not something easily accessible to an inexperienced reader. Thus, his audience tends to be relatively well-read. He seems to recognize the lack of routine critical reading and the socio-economic-educational divide present in America. He poses a questions to his readers: Does an author conform his or her language to reach the masses? Does the author write regardless of reception? Does the author purposefully challenge reading norms and hope the reader catches up? More importantly, has the academic writer become so isolated from the world that he or she no longer participates in it?

Peet’s scientific, linguistic, and cultural intertextuality continually branches out, inside, and around the book. The collection of stories requires the readers to engage themselves, follow trails, research, and enjoy. In many ways it’s a puzzle. It’s a text that Norton would publish as a critical edition long after Peet’s death. Footnotes filling half a page. Essays by hungry scholars added at the end.

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Recently Received / Review Copies Available

[NOTE: Most of the titles below are available for review at Tarpaulin Sky. Titles marked with asterisks are hand-bound books or special editions and are limited, if still available. Publishers please mail Book Reviews, Tarpaulin Sky Press, PO Box 189, Grafton, VT 05146]

Jeffrey Beam, Gospel Earth (Skysill Press, 2010)

Nick Demske, Nick Demske (Fence Books, 2010)

Christian Hawkey, Ventrakl (Ugly Duckling Press, 2010)

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