“March: Book Three” charts the concluding events of John Lewis’s memoir of his participation in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. John Lewis, Georgia state Representative and former civil rights activist, joins author Andrew Aydin and illustrator Nate Powell to enumerate the woes of the black man in pre-voting rights America in the style...
Category: Reviews
In review: Hillsdale music duo ‘Q Curius’ drops new beats this week
In the downpour of a cold November evening, while the trees bent to a 45 degree angle, I had the privilege of listening to an album that can only be described as torrential. “Abrasive Materials” is the debut, full-length album from Q Curius, an electronic-rap duo composed of senior Joel Calvert and alumnus Forester...
Politics prevails over literature in this year’s awards
Writing is, as Joan Didion states in her essay “Why I Write,” “an aggressive, even a hostile act.” In forming words into sentences, stringing them into paragraphs, and lacing those into chapters of books, a writer participates in a sort of coercion. The writer’s goal is to show something to the reader through force...
POETRY: Daniel Borzutzky’s poetry of exploitation impoverishes the reading experience
The National Book Award selection panel pulled no punches with their poetry winner this year. But Daniel Borzutzky’s achievement was a political victory, not a poetic one. In “The Performance of Becoming Human,” Daniel Borzutzky’s National Book Award-winning collection, poetry is a political weapon, a bombshell meant to explode Americans’ delusions about their privileged position...
Novel glimpses into the poet’s mind
Nicholson Baker’s mind captures the “fine suddenness” of every moment. His work fixates on the minutiae of the everyday experience while largely ignoring the notion of a plot. His dense, accurate prose tightens the reader’s grip on reality. Two of his more recent projects, however, develop a compelling and sophisticated narrative. His two most recent...