Cleveland Review of Books
@clereviewbooks.bsky.social
the cleveland of reviews of books
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"Kaplan deploys novelistic form as a way to represent and probe the various and also competing desires underlying the social upheaval and where and how it all fell apart."
Jonathan Larson On Leslie Kaplan’s “Miss Nobody Knows”
clereviewofbooks.com/leslie-kapla...
Jonathan Larson On Leslie Kaplan’s “Miss Nobody Knows”
clereviewofbooks.com/leslie-kapla...
Selling Tainted Blood: On Leslie Kaplan’s “Miss Nobody Knows” - Cleveland Review of Books
Once a body has been introduced, the enquete must follow.
clereviewofbooks.com
December 11, 2025 at 7:00 PM
"Kaplan deploys novelistic form as a way to represent and probe the various and also competing desires underlying the social upheaval and where and how it all fell apart."
Jonathan Larson On Leslie Kaplan’s “Miss Nobody Knows”
clereviewofbooks.com/leslie-kapla...
Jonathan Larson On Leslie Kaplan’s “Miss Nobody Knows”
clereviewofbooks.com/leslie-kapla...
"This ground we walk on sopped dreams up
so we could hear the leopard talk through
the crush of roughnecks in the moon pool."
excerpt from "The Disinherited" by Terrence Arjoon @uglyducklingpresse.bsky.social
clereviewofbooks.com/terrence-arj...
so we could hear the leopard talk through
the crush of roughnecks in the moon pool."
excerpt from "The Disinherited" by Terrence Arjoon @uglyducklingpresse.bsky.social
clereviewofbooks.com/terrence-arj...
from "The Disinherited" - Cleveland Review of Books
In this delightful place, whose exquisitely carved windows look out over the caliche, I lost my European hair.
clereviewofbooks.com
December 10, 2025 at 4:39 PM
"This ground we walk on sopped dreams up
so we could hear the leopard talk through
the crush of roughnecks in the moon pool."
excerpt from "The Disinherited" by Terrence Arjoon @uglyducklingpresse.bsky.social
clereviewofbooks.com/terrence-arj...
so we could hear the leopard talk through
the crush of roughnecks in the moon pool."
excerpt from "The Disinherited" by Terrence Arjoon @uglyducklingpresse.bsky.social
clereviewofbooks.com/terrence-arj...
"But of course, I should say about Pirkko Saisio: people call her a living legend."
Jordan Barger interviews Mia Spangenberg, translator from the Finnish of Pirkko Saisio's "Helsinki Trilogy." @twolinespress.com
clereviewofbooks.com/mia-spangenb...
Jordan Barger interviews Mia Spangenberg, translator from the Finnish of Pirkko Saisio's "Helsinki Trilogy." @twolinespress.com
clereviewofbooks.com/mia-spangenb...
She Has That Kind of Stature: Two Translators Talk Pirkko Saisio’s "The Helsinki Trilogy" - Cleveland Review of Books
You absolutely cannot do Finnish word for word. It would be garbage.
clereviewofbooks.com
December 9, 2025 at 4:05 PM
"But of course, I should say about Pirkko Saisio: people call her a living legend."
Jordan Barger interviews Mia Spangenberg, translator from the Finnish of Pirkko Saisio's "Helsinki Trilogy." @twolinespress.com
clereviewofbooks.com/mia-spangenb...
Jordan Barger interviews Mia Spangenberg, translator from the Finnish of Pirkko Saisio's "Helsinki Trilogy." @twolinespress.com
clereviewofbooks.com/mia-spangenb...
"I have invented a form of thinking about literature — Hmmm & Bang —
which may appear playful (because it is) but which (make no mistake)
is a challenge to our dispositions, our ungainly knack for categories."
-Emiliano Gomez, "HMMM & BANG"
clereviewofbooks.com/hmmm-bang-an...
which may appear playful (because it is) but which (make no mistake)
is a challenge to our dispositions, our ungainly knack for categories."
-Emiliano Gomez, "HMMM & BANG"
clereviewofbooks.com/hmmm-bang-an...
HMMM & BANG: AN ESSAY IN VERSE ON THE OCCASION OF LETRAS LATINAS' ONE POEM FESTIVAL - Cleveland Review of Books
I have invented a form of thinking about literature - Hmmm & Bang - which may appear playful (because it is) but which (make no mistake) is a challenge to our dispositions, our ungainly knack for cate...
clereviewofbooks.com
December 5, 2025 at 3:18 PM
"I have invented a form of thinking about literature — Hmmm & Bang —
which may appear playful (because it is) but which (make no mistake)
is a challenge to our dispositions, our ungainly knack for categories."
-Emiliano Gomez, "HMMM & BANG"
clereviewofbooks.com/hmmm-bang-an...
which may appear playful (because it is) but which (make no mistake)
is a challenge to our dispositions, our ungainly knack for categories."
-Emiliano Gomez, "HMMM & BANG"
clereviewofbooks.com/hmmm-bang-an...
"do you overwhelm, in traffic, do you have a favorite, sibling, or season, or a star, no one, knows, what you are thinking, even when you tell them"
4 poems by Alex Tretbar
clereviewofbooks.com/four-poems-a...
4 poems by Alex Tretbar
clereviewofbooks.com/four-poems-a...
Four Poems - Cleveland Review of Books
the pictures, of you, begin to resemble, you, less, the more, you scroll down.
clereviewofbooks.com
December 3, 2025 at 7:51 PM
"do you overwhelm, in traffic, do you have a favorite, sibling, or season, or a star, no one, knows, what you are thinking, even when you tell them"
4 poems by Alex Tretbar
clereviewofbooks.com/four-poems-a...
4 poems by Alex Tretbar
clereviewofbooks.com/four-poems-a...
"Wong’s West Coast novel and Geoghegan’s East-Coast-turned-Midwest memoir are both preoccupied with the experience of being just on the outside of a movement, not quite at the center but not quite separate from its concerns."
-Lillian Lippold
clereviewofbooks.com/which-side-a...
-Lillian Lippold
clereviewofbooks.com/which-side-a...
Circuits of Solidarity - Cleveland Review of Books
There is no middle ground, so ambiguous players must take sides.
clereviewofbooks.com
December 2, 2025 at 4:00 PM
"Wong’s West Coast novel and Geoghegan’s East-Coast-turned-Midwest memoir are both preoccupied with the experience of being just on the outside of a movement, not quite at the center but not quite separate from its concerns."
-Lillian Lippold
clereviewofbooks.com/which-side-a...
-Lillian Lippold
clereviewofbooks.com/which-side-a...
Reposted by Cleveland Review of Books
MARK YOUR CALENDARS 🗓️
Fiction candidate Willow Campbell will be reading at the Cleveland launch party of @clereviewbooks.bsky.social’s latest issue 🎙️📓
12/14 @ 6:30 @ Dunlap’s Corner Bar
See you there 🧐
Fiction candidate Willow Campbell will be reading at the Cleveland launch party of @clereviewbooks.bsky.social’s latest issue 🎙️📓
12/14 @ 6:30 @ Dunlap’s Corner Bar
See you there 🧐
December 1, 2025 at 1:49 PM
MARK YOUR CALENDARS 🗓️
Fiction candidate Willow Campbell will be reading at the Cleveland launch party of @clereviewbooks.bsky.social’s latest issue 🎙️📓
12/14 @ 6:30 @ Dunlap’s Corner Bar
See you there 🧐
Fiction candidate Willow Campbell will be reading at the Cleveland launch party of @clereviewbooks.bsky.social’s latest issue 🎙️📓
12/14 @ 6:30 @ Dunlap’s Corner Bar
See you there 🧐
November 28, 2025 at 12:35 PM
"The chickens are organizing a game. It appears to be a putt putt tournament, or something like it. A hybrid of poker and minigolf. At this point, I realize my plan has backfired."
from "From the Pocket of Agent Dickinson" by Zack Darcee and Elise Houcek
clereviewofbooks.com/from-from-th...
from "From the Pocket of Agent Dickinson" by Zack Darcee and Elise Houcek
clereviewofbooks.com/from-from-th...
from "From the Pocket of Agent Dickinson" - Cleveland Review of Books
My wires reach her brain. It is a brain of Nothingness. In there go the dictionaries.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 28, 2025 at 12:35 PM
"The chickens are organizing a game. It appears to be a putt putt tournament, or something like it. A hybrid of poker and minigolf. At this point, I realize my plan has backfired."
from "From the Pocket of Agent Dickinson" by Zack Darcee and Elise Houcek
clereviewofbooks.com/from-from-th...
from "From the Pocket of Agent Dickinson" by Zack Darcee and Elise Houcek
clereviewofbooks.com/from-from-th...
Reposted by Cleveland Review of Books
Jeff Alessandrelli's essay remembering Alice Notley at @clereviewbooks.bsky.social is really moving & so full of Alice's presence.
In the background of Jeff's piece is another story: small press publishing changes our lives & our shared world.
clereviewofbooks.com/alice-notley...
In the background of Jeff's piece is another story: small press publishing changes our lives & our shared world.
clereviewofbooks.com/alice-notley...
Alice Notley's Symphonic Everything - Cleveland Review of Books
The sometimes garrulous, sometimes insolent, sometimes exuberant New York School style that the beginning part of her career largely lived within was not her go-to poetic mode in the last decades of h...
clereviewofbooks.com
November 27, 2025 at 12:41 AM
Jeff Alessandrelli's essay remembering Alice Notley at @clereviewbooks.bsky.social is really moving & so full of Alice's presence.
In the background of Jeff's piece is another story: small press publishing changes our lives & our shared world.
clereviewofbooks.com/alice-notley...
In the background of Jeff's piece is another story: small press publishing changes our lives & our shared world.
clereviewofbooks.com/alice-notley...
"Rage can be just as much a lifeforce as pleasure".
Alyse Burnside On David Wojnarowicz’s “Memories that Smell Like Gasoline”
clereviewofbooks.com/david-wojnar...
Alyse Burnside On David Wojnarowicz’s “Memories that Smell Like Gasoline”
clereviewofbooks.com/david-wojnar...
A Ticking Clock: On David Wojnarowicz’s “Memories that Smell Like Gasoline” - Cleveland Review of Books
It is a drive David identifies with, one that draws him towards those who do not understand or adhere to the manufactured code of conduct of society.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 25, 2025 at 1:03 PM
"Rage can be just as much a lifeforce as pleasure".
Alyse Burnside On David Wojnarowicz’s “Memories that Smell Like Gasoline”
clereviewofbooks.com/david-wojnar...
Alyse Burnside On David Wojnarowicz’s “Memories that Smell Like Gasoline”
clereviewofbooks.com/david-wojnar...
"Romano’s memoir is an early example of feminist life writing, comparable to the work of not just of Ernaux, but also the memoirs of Simone de Beauvoir and the autobiography of Marguerite Duras."
Eliza Browning on Lalla Romano's "In Farthest Seas"
clereviewofbooks.com/lalla-romano...
Eliza Browning on Lalla Romano's "In Farthest Seas"
clereviewofbooks.com/lalla-romano...
Minima Mortalia: On Lalla Romano’s “In Farthest Seas” - Cleveland Review of Books
The impression is that Romano is attempting to stretch time in order to prolong her husband's life, summoning memories of his past selves as a form of resistance against death.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 21, 2025 at 12:50 AM
"Romano’s memoir is an early example of feminist life writing, comparable to the work of not just of Ernaux, but also the memoirs of Simone de Beauvoir and the autobiography of Marguerite Duras."
Eliza Browning on Lalla Romano's "In Farthest Seas"
clereviewofbooks.com/lalla-romano...
Eliza Browning on Lalla Romano's "In Farthest Seas"
clereviewofbooks.com/lalla-romano...
"In fact, once he knows he has Mare and Bern completely under his spell, he sends them on errands. For a serial killer, he is incredibly lazy about the necessities of everyday life, like money and food."
from "Their Many Names" by Jess Richardson
clereviewofbooks.com/their-many-n...
from "Their Many Names" by Jess Richardson
clereviewofbooks.com/their-many-n...
Their Many Names - Cleveland Review of Books
She did not know her future husband owned a gun, but he briefly served and so it makes a sudden kind of sense.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 19, 2025 at 4:47 PM
"In fact, once he knows he has Mare and Bern completely under his spell, he sends them on errands. For a serial killer, he is incredibly lazy about the necessities of everyday life, like money and food."
from "Their Many Names" by Jess Richardson
clereviewofbooks.com/their-many-n...
from "Their Many Names" by Jess Richardson
clereviewofbooks.com/their-many-n...
Reposted by Cleveland Review of Books
community mausoleum is putting out some of the best stuff rn--I loved this book.
Temptation fragrant energy Floribunda in memory Floribunda remind me / Madame madame in memory of all America shrub flag line bangs wind
from "Deadheading" by Jon Conley
clereviewofbooks.com/from-deadhea...
from "Deadheading" by Jon Conley
clereviewofbooks.com/from-deadhea...
from "Deadheading" - Cleveland Review of Books
Madame madame in memory of all America shrub flag line bangs wind
clereviewofbooks.com
November 17, 2025 at 2:27 PM
community mausoleum is putting out some of the best stuff rn--I loved this book.
"What [New Romantics] are calling for is not a simple resurgence of feeling, a giving of ourselves over to every passion we have, but rather a conversion of desire."
John-Paul Heil on Joshua Wren, Sally Thomas, and "New Romanticism"
clereviewofbooks.com/new-romantic...
John-Paul Heil on Joshua Wren, Sally Thomas, and "New Romanticism"
clereviewofbooks.com/new-romantic...
New Romantics in the Thick Real: On Joshua Hren and Sally Thomas - Cleveland Review of Books
New Romanticism is attentive to those transcendent wants for things that will truly fulfill us regardless of time, place, or social circumstance.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 18, 2025 at 4:49 PM
"What [New Romantics] are calling for is not a simple resurgence of feeling, a giving of ourselves over to every passion we have, but rather a conversion of desire."
John-Paul Heil on Joshua Wren, Sally Thomas, and "New Romanticism"
clereviewofbooks.com/new-romantic...
John-Paul Heil on Joshua Wren, Sally Thomas, and "New Romanticism"
clereviewofbooks.com/new-romantic...
CRB 3.2: Revolutionary poetics, the Paris Commune, containers as cultural memory, feminist unsexing of language, the ethics of digression, grief as technology, art in munitions bunkers. If you flip through it fast, the stars spin. Welcome to the zoetrope.
November 17, 2025 at 5:49 PM
CRB 3.2: Revolutionary poetics, the Paris Commune, containers as cultural memory, feminist unsexing of language, the ethics of digression, grief as technology, art in munitions bunkers. If you flip through it fast, the stars spin. Welcome to the zoetrope.
“One of the ironies of his posthumous reputation is that, to be read and accepted by canonical scholarship, James had to be embraced by scholars whose views ran directly counter to his own.” — Peter Huhne on two new critical perspectives on Henry James both from
@NYRB_Imprints
@NYRB_Imprints
November 14, 2025 at 7:38 PM
“One of the ironies of his posthumous reputation is that, to be read and accepted by canonical scholarship, James had to be embraced by scholars whose views ran directly counter to his own.” — Peter Huhne on two new critical perspectives on Henry James both from
@NYRB_Imprints
@NYRB_Imprints
I. was 9 when I fell
from the window
for language.
from "Vision Sans Seraphim" by Jed Munson.
clereviewofbooks.com/from-vision-...
from the window
for language.
from "Vision Sans Seraphim" by Jed Munson.
clereviewofbooks.com/from-vision-...
from "Vision Sans Seraphim" - Cleveland Review of Books
I. was 9 when I fell from the window for language.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 12, 2025 at 10:47 PM
I. was 9 when I fell
from the window
for language.
from "Vision Sans Seraphim" by Jed Munson.
clereviewofbooks.com/from-vision-...
from the window
for language.
from "Vision Sans Seraphim" by Jed Munson.
clereviewofbooks.com/from-vision-...
"The poets grapple with what it means to create a purpose-built archive and the ways in which this impulse counters the traditional principle of the archive."
Megan McKenzie on "Permanent Record"
clereviewofbooks.com/read-backwar...
Megan McKenzie on "Permanent Record"
clereviewofbooks.com/read-backwar...
Read Backwards: on “Permanent Record” - Cleveland Review of Books
The human impulse towards self-documentation is everywhere once you start looking for it.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 6, 2025 at 8:45 PM
"The poets grapple with what it means to create a purpose-built archive and the ways in which this impulse counters the traditional principle of the archive."
Megan McKenzie on "Permanent Record"
clereviewofbooks.com/read-backwar...
Megan McKenzie on "Permanent Record"
clereviewofbooks.com/read-backwar...
Reposted by Cleveland Review of Books
In @clereviewbooks.bsky.social, a deeply original dive into Don DeLillo’s JFK assassination epic Libra in the form of “twelve bullets, four appendices, and six exhibits.” “DeLillo’s Libra is a book about the entanglement of reading, writing, and living,” Nicole Kaack explains.
Twelve Bullets, Four Appendices, and Six Exhibits: On Don DeLillo’s “Libra” - Cleveland Review of Books
Writers, like lone gunmen, are compulsive worldbuilders. They write their own past, present, and future. DeLillo has described himself as a man in a small room.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 5, 2025 at 9:30 PM
In @clereviewbooks.bsky.social, a deeply original dive into Don DeLillo’s JFK assassination epic Libra in the form of “twelve bullets, four appendices, and six exhibits.” “DeLillo’s Libra is a book about the entanglement of reading, writing, and living,” Nicole Kaack explains.
"These plots I conceive easily
They describe action
As original as the sun’s constant production
The bells that ring across the estuary
Draw the hours in and together"
Three Poems by Hannah Piette
clereviewofbooks.com/three-poems-2/
They describe action
As original as the sun’s constant production
The bells that ring across the estuary
Draw the hours in and together"
Three Poems by Hannah Piette
clereviewofbooks.com/three-poems-2/
Three Poems - Cleveland Review of Books
Forests moderate speech / By way of the soil.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 5, 2025 at 3:38 PM
"These plots I conceive easily
They describe action
As original as the sun’s constant production
The bells that ring across the estuary
Draw the hours in and together"
Three Poems by Hannah Piette
clereviewofbooks.com/three-poems-2/
They describe action
As original as the sun’s constant production
The bells that ring across the estuary
Draw the hours in and together"
Three Poems by Hannah Piette
clereviewofbooks.com/three-poems-2/
November 4, 2025 at 2:59 PM
"Randolph Healy deserves to get noticed. The Ireland-raised poet and math teacher—who will turn 70 next year—has been assembling thoughtful, counterintuitive poems, short and long, into small press volumes since the 1980s."
Stephanie Burt on Randolph Healy
clereviewofbooks.com/stephanie-bu...
Stephanie Burt on Randolph Healy
clereviewofbooks.com/stephanie-bu...
It’s Better to Stay Many-Minded: On Randolph Healy’s "The Electron-Ghost Casino" - Cleveland Review of Books
Some poets get noticed easily, early on. Their work speaks to the moment, or to the zeitgeist, or to a nation’s or a generation’s sense of itself.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 4, 2025 at 2:58 PM
"Randolph Healy deserves to get noticed. The Ireland-raised poet and math teacher—who will turn 70 next year—has been assembling thoughtful, counterintuitive poems, short and long, into small press volumes since the 1980s."
Stephanie Burt on Randolph Healy
clereviewofbooks.com/stephanie-bu...
Stephanie Burt on Randolph Healy
clereviewofbooks.com/stephanie-bu...