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Index: Books & Publishing

August – Prose and Poetry – 2024

♦   I. Jane Satterfield | Between the Dog & the Wolf and four more poems ◊ Between the Dog & the Wolf is the hinge between the mythic & the mundane, the scrim of light where the shepherd’s alert to the shifting shape at the edge of the flock— II. Clive Watkins | Intercontinental […]

Excerpt: Hamlet and Mourning in David Melnick’s A Pin’s Fee

BY: SALLY CONNOLLY avid Melnick studied mathematics as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago and focused his graduate studies in literature at UC Berkeley mainly on Shakespeare; his PhD dissertation was on Louis Zukofsky’s writings on Shakespeare. He worked from 1984 until 2000 as a copyeditor at the San Francisco Chronicle and died in […]

‘The heart is a repetitious dancer’: Three Uncollected Poems from Elaine Randell

By ELAINE RANDELL. ◊ On finding your copy of The Observers Book of Geology 1960 for Barry MacSweeney alling open at Fools Gold the stone that would create sparks when struck against. Struck against, railed against but it’s still tender, sore, The heart in flames again seeing Seeing your name on the frontispiece with all […]

Four Prose Poems by the Piqueray Twins

◊ Professionals aving scaled the wall, they leapt over the bristling shards of broken glass, hoping to land softly in the slop-pile left over from last year’s meager scrapings. As they fell endlessly, they came to the conclusion that they must have picked the wrong wall. Growing used to the void, they started to think […]

Review: Orfeo’s Last Act by Michelene Wandor

Published by Greenwich Exchange at a special price of £10; also available as an ebook for £4.99 from Amazon and other ebook retailers. Reviewed by ALESSANDRO CORTELLO. ◊ nlike many novels with musical themes, Orfeo’s Last Act by Michelene Wandor is a book where music is not used as mere bait to attract superficial readers, […]

October – Poetry and Prose – 2024

Under new management–new content coming soon.

Vladimir Sorokin’s ‘Blue Lard’.

A Fortnightly Review. Vladimir Sorokin. Translated from the Russian by Max Lawton. Blue Lard New York Review of Books 2024 | pbk, £12.85 | 336pp. By Garin Cycholl. ◊ f the religious icon works as a window, a frame onto that “other world,” does one see through or into time itself? If the icon is […]

Was Jesus a humourist?

By Alan Wall. ◊ ot a bundle of laughs, the New Testament, let’s be honest. And yet there is a subtle realignment constantly going on, which qualifies the texts for examination as the overall work of a humourist. That humourist is Jesus, and what he is up to is defamiliarizng morality. He cannot see a […]

‘Chaos and the Clean Line’.

A Fortnightly Review. Stephen Romer Chaos and the Clean Line: Writings on Franco-British Modernism Legenda 2024 | Hb, £85.00 | 384pp. By Chris Miller. ◊ n the magnifying glass of the poetic word, Modernism is the history of the twentieth century; it was, you may remember a turbulent history—utopian hopes, political polarisation, prejudice, wars, and […]

from ‘The Runiad’ book 8

< from Book 7                                                                                                        […]

Endangered Antiquarian.

A Requiem for the Old Bookshops of Europe. By WILL STONE. ◊ ne by one, like lights going out in an office building at dusk, antiquarian bookshops are dying out across Europe, but who is even aware of the implications of this decline apart from their struggling owners and that minority of dedicated bibliophiles who […]

Imaginator.

By ALAN WALL. ◊ he word has not survived, except in the far reaches of rock music, and some off-beat business ventures. Imaginator. One who makes it all up. The word became entangled in the seventeenth century with the Docetists, which might have led to it being treated warily. The Docetists believed that Jesus was […]

The Indian Jungle.

A Fortnightly Review. The Indian Jungle: Psychoanalysis and Non-Western Civilizations by Sudhir Kakar. Karnac Books, 2o24 | 9781915565204 (paperback); 9781915565181 (e-book) | £19.99 Kakar Art Collective  ◊ By Anthony Howell.  rom the word go, Sudhir Kakar’s book on psychoanalysis and non-Western civilizations promises to be entertaining as well as enlightening. Initially he points out that […]

Tragedy: The modern heist.

By Alan Wall.  •  The Tragic Dilemma he gods still lurk in the background of modern tragedy. Characters cock one ear to see if they can make out the congratulation or tears from afar. But they hear nothing, or perhaps they hear the distant sound of laughter. It is not a cheering sound. It is […]

from White Ivory, chapters 19 & 20

< chapters 17 & 18         chapters 21 & 22 > A Fortnightly Serial. By ALAN WALL. • Chapter Nineteen. Vale of Llangollen T THE BEGINNING of the Apology, Socrates asks that his judges look upon him as a stranger. He might have said, as William Blake was to put it a few […]