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‘Auto/Body’ by Vickie Vértiz: Driving Force

by Gus Berg

Posted on by Zack Ravas

The title of Vickie Vértiz’s latest poetry collection, Auto/Body (90 pages; University of Notre Dame Press), suggests the inner workings of cars, but its focus has to do with the harnessing and distribution of power, personally and societally. Sometimes fueled by rage, sometimes by desire, this power serves as the driving force behind this collection. Vértiz is a Mexican American poet who teaches at UC Santa Barbara. She divides her book, which won the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, into three sections: Alternator, Distributor, and Transmission. The first section sets the tone with its sense of righteous anger. In an […]

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Carrying On: ‘Afterglow: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors,’ Edited by Grist

by Zoe Binder

Posted on by Zack Ravas

The twelve stories in the anthology Afterglow: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors (223 pages; The New Press) take readers into the future and across the globe to witness how humanity has persevered in the face of climate-crisis-induced destruction. Across its pages, readers are treated to exhilarating inventiveness, as the various contributors imagine science-fiction concepts like AI pollinators and plastic-eaters, a program that can translate the thoughts and emotions of animals, and suits that allow humans to wield the distinct strengths of insects like spiders and termites. However, the collection doesn’t simply present imagined solutions to climate change. Many of the […]

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‘An Ordinary Life’ by B.H. Fairchild: The Winding Road of Grief

by Gus Berg

Posted on by Zack Ravas

In his latest poetry collection, An Ordinary Life (67 pages; W. W. Norton), B.H. Fairchild, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the author of the collections The Art of the Lathe (1998) and Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest (2002) , doesn’t flinch from the foxholes remembered secondhand in “My Father, Fighting the Fascists in WWII” or from images of a Korean War veteran bagging canned goods without fingers in “Groceries.” Fairchild offers succinct commentary with discrete but vivid imagery, honoring the beauty of small-town scenes with artistry and exactitude, transforming even a Walmart on […]

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‘Dr. No’ By Percival Everett: Bond Upended

by Charlie Barton

Posted on by Zack Ravas

A black, autistic mathematician, Wala Kitu is not James Bond—but he is the hero of Percival Everett’s anti-Bond, Bond novel, Dr. No (262 pages; Graywolf Press). The book, now a National Book Critics Circle award finalist, is very much a spy thriller—filled with sports cars, hench-people, secret submarines, and hidden shark traps—even though Everett radically subverts the classic 007 formula. Wala’s love interest is another autistic mathematician, Eigen Victor, a specialist in topology with a tendency to state the obvious. And the nefarious super-villain is John Sill, a self-made Black billionaire whose sole purpose is to destroy America, to exact […]

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The Y

by Bethany Ball

Posted on by Zack Ravas

Back then, Yale sat behind the front desk counter in the resident section of the Y and I sat beside him. Reggie worked maintenance and had the gray cast and steady hands of a true alcoholic. He was always on time and reliable. Robert was a resident and lived on the sixth floor. He had

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After Dark

by Rhoda Huffey

Posted on by Zack Ravas

When the pigeon first appeared in my front yard, I noticed because he didn’t fly off immediately. He walked over to the jade plant by my front porch and contemplated the leaves of the succulent. My mind was full of other things at that moment: what to wear to that evening, did a man named

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‘All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End’ By Charles Johnson: The Humor of Politics

by Charlie Barton

Posted on by Zack Ravas

Charles Johnson’s collection of comics, All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End: The Cartoons of Charles Johnson (280 pages; New York Review Comics), is an especially provocative yet conscious-raising read in the wake of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests. Spanning his entire career as a cartoonist—starting decades before his novel Middle Passage won the 1991 National Book Award—the collection focuses mainly on his most prolific era during the 1960s and 1970s, when his work explored black radicalism and the racism that birthed it. The comic strip may seem unfit for such weighty matters, but in the hands of Johnson—novelist, philosopher, […]

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‘Folk Music – A Bob Dylan Biography In Seven Songs’ by Greil Marcus: The Holy Grail

by Paul Wilner

Posted on by Zack Ravas

“So this is a book of cigarette butts,’’ Greil Marcus writes, without apology, in Folk Music – A Bob Dylan Biography In Seven Songs (Yale University Press; 288 pages), his latest attempt to interweave the complicated legacy of the Nobel Prize-winning hobo from Hibbing with Lincoln’s mystic chords of memory, our unresolved racial divide, and the “wild mercury sound’’ emanating from those trying to stand their ground in an invisible republic far outside the white noise of hot takes and cold comfort. He’s referring, of course, to the unaccountable adulation Dylan (still) draws from armies of obsessed fans, quoting from […]

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ZYZZYVA Holiday Gift Guide

by ZYZZYVA

Posted on by Zack Ravas

Dear Friend,  It’s that time of year! The holidays are upon us and, with them, the pressure to procure the right gift for our loved ones. We’d like to offer our assistance to those desiring to shop small, shop local, and shop mindfully. With this in mind, here is a helpful list of gift suggestions that might just fit the bill. And we wish you and yours a wonderful holiday season and happy new year. Yours, the ZYZZYVA team For the Poet: Even us ardent fans of fiction have a friend or family member who is most moved by poetry and […]

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Flat Map

by Yuri Herrera

Posted on by Zack Ravas

Translated by Lisa DillmanPerhaps they could have saved the lives of all those who died chasing the truth to the ends of the earth if they’d thought more about, say, the thickness of trees. But these people, like all people, felt compelled to see things with their own eyes, which would later be eaten by

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‘It Must Be a Misunderstanding’ by Coral Bracho: Adding Color and Depth to One of Life’s Hardships

by Meryl Natchez

Posted on by Zack Ravas

Anyone who has experienced a loved one’s trajectory through Alzheimer’s might wonder how a book of poetry focused on that harrowing experience could be uplifting. But Coral Bracho’s It Must Be a Misunderstanding (New Directions; 135 pages), translated by Forrest Gander, is not only tender and compassionate, but leaves the reader suffused in the mystery of being. The book is dedicated to Bracho’s mother, who died in 2012 from complications of Alzheimer’s. A short book of fragmentary lyrics, it builds through its sections like a concerto, adding color and depth as it goes. The themes of Intuitions, Observations, and various […]

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On the Art of Interviewing

by Michael Krasny

Posted on by Zack Ravas

I learned an important lesson interviewing David Byrne. He was (and is) an artist I respect and admire, but he was a terrible interview. Monosyllabic grunts were what I got from him as well as a clear indication that he simply did not want to be there, in the studio, being interviewed. Sometimes you can

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