Adjunct Lecturer James CihlarA Conversation with My Imaginary Daughter [chapbook]
Bloom, 2013
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, 2012 Bloom poetry judge who selected Cihlar's manuscript: "A sad, shrewd humor permeates this collection, as does a palpable sense of gratitude. What's Franchot Tone to the fight one wages for identity against one's mother, or Moses to the zeitgeist, except that, in every life, connections to a vibrant imagined past mark the borders? As the speaker notes in 'Second Banana,' 'Unity is the moment when living becomes history.'"
Professor Maria Damon, with mIEKAL aND and Camille Bacos
The End
Xerox Sutra Editions, 2011 (appeared in print 2013)
A photo-poetry collaboration, a short film, a performance, and now a book juxtaposing Bacos' photos with Damon and aND's writing. In their words: "The last crumbling remains of wooden architecture from the Golden Age of rural life still hold literary & semantic clues for an organic poetry of the future. The Nature Poem has collapsed, atrophied by its own stale language of flesh and bone. And like these rural buildings & settlements, words can be liberated to enable open networks of innovative language and thought."
Lightsey Darst (MFA 2003)DANCE
Coffee House Press, 2013
Patrick Elliott in the San Francisco Book Review: "[A]n artful collection of poems that, despite the delicate title, are often raw and unpredictable. The secret to these poems is that they are not about dance. Instead, they employ the spirit of dance. . . . A certain amount of disdain for authority can be seen in the poems, almost in a spirit of anarchy, yet there is a grace and beauty in the poems that shows Darst's background in dance as the poems pirouette from one subject to another."
Kristin Fitzsimmons (MFA 2013)
all these empty bone bowls [chapbook]
Dancing Girl Press, 2013
Publisher description: "Since 2004 the annual dgp chapbook series has been devoted to publishing innovative writing by women authors in handmade editions, as well as exploring the intersection of writing and the visual/book arts."
Johannes Göransson (BA 1996)Haute Surveillance
Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2013
Blake Butler at VICE: "A feverish and explicit set of images and ideas revolving around power, fetish, porn, media, violence, translation, punishment, performance, and aesthetics. Taking its title from a Jean Genet play of the same name, it's kind of like a novelization of a movie about the production of a play based on Abu Ghraib, though with way more starlets and cocaine and semen."
Margaret Hasse (MA 1984)
Earth's Appetite
Nodin Press, 2013
The poet Margot Galt on her blog Margotlog appreciates Hasse's close focus in this her fourth collection of poetry--"as in 'Consideration for the Feet,' when an inspection of feet above the bath water, 'rosy as babies' becomes 'They have been wild to waltz./ They march when I'm mad.' Or in a tea garden, after naming and sampling teas, she and a friend remember 'threshold events' and she gives a haunting rendition of a dying brother's request that bits of his ash be put in things he liked: 'his banjo, top drawer of his desk, the garden.' Such poignant specificity is hard to forget."
W. Lawrence Hogue (BA 1973)
Postmodernism, Traditional Cultural Forms, and African American Narratives
SUNY Press, 2013
Publisher description: "This book explores how African American social and political movements, African American studies, independent scholars, and traditional cultural forms revisit and challenge the representation of the African American as deviant other. . . . Hogue provides original and insightful readings of six experimental/ postmodern African American texts: John Edgar Wideman's Philadelphia Fire; Percival Everett's Erasure; Toni Morrison's Jazz; Bonnie Greer's Hanging by Her Teeth; Clarence Major's Reflex and Bone Structure; and Xam Wilson Cartiér's Muse-Echo Blues. Hogue reveals that these authors uncover spaces with different definitions of life that still retain a wildness and have not been completely mapped out and trademarked by normative American culture."
Alex Lemon (MFA 2004)The Wish Book
Milkweed Editions, 2013
Chosen by Library Journal as one of "Ten Essential Poetry Titles for Winter 2014": "Some readers might know Lemon solely from his memoir, Happy, which would be a pity because he writes tough, visceral poetry with broad appeal. In this new collection, the author, winner of a literature fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, energetically examines the self in a pop-cultural world."
Professor Nabil Matar
Henry Stubbe and the Beginnings of Islam: The Originall & Progress of Mahometanism
Columbia University Press, 2013
Donald R. Dickson, Texas A&M University: "The most acute literary historian of Islam in the West has now given us a valuable, critical edition of Henry Stubbe's The Originall & Progress of Mahometanism, contextualized by a well-researched introduction. Stubbe's manuscript treatise, which drew for the first time on Arabic and non-Christian sources in Latin translation, was revolutionary in its methodology and understanding of Islam. He presented the first historical biography of the Prophet and told the story of the spread of Islam, dispelling many untruths, such as conversion by the sword, while recognizing Muslim toleration for other religions. Nabil Matar's work illuminates an important moment in the late seventeenth century."Alison McGhee (MA 1993) with Kate DiCamillo
Bink and Gollie: Best Friends Forever
Candlewick, 2013
Ann Kelley in Booklist: "Ah, best friendship. Short, wild-haired Bink and tall, neat-haired Gollie epitomize its ups and downs. In this sequel to Bink & Gollie (2010) and Bink & Gollie: Two for One (2012), DiCamillo and McGhee once again cleverly merge early reader, graphic novel, and picture book into a delightful ode to an unlikely duo. . . . Droll, and with spot-on emotions, this return of the dynamic, roller-skating pair will make fans cheer."
Alison McGhee (MA 1993)The Case of the Missing Donut
Dial, 2013
Sarah Harrison Smith in the New York Times: "In a little anywhere town, a small boy in a big hat with 'sheriff' taped to the front goes to the bakery with his deputy dog. 'Their mission? To bring a dozen donuts safely home.' The real threat to the doughnuts is the sheriff himself, who can't resist peeking in the box. Soon there's one doughnut missing and a trail of evidence as obvious as the sheriff's guilty conscience. With McGhee's light humor and Roxas' appealing and gently-hued illustrations, this tale of doughnut perfidy takes the cake."
Professor Emerita Toni McNaron
Into the Paradox: Conservative Spirit, Feminist Politics
Hurley Publishing, 2013
Publisher description: "As a practicing Catholic and feminist scholar, Toni McNaron embraces the seemingly unresolvable and accepts the inherent paradox arising from her preference for conservative spiritual practices while remaining committed to radical politics. Residing patiently in this 'uncomfortable mystery' has allowed her to plunge into the deeper spaces of her spirit--not insisting on consistency or certainty or even agreement as she strives to deepen her connection with the God of her understanding in today's post-modern and post-Christendom world."Katie Robison (PhD candidate)
Coiled Snake (Windstorm Series)
Quil Books, 2013
The sequel to 2012's Downburst, which introduced Robison's Windstorm Series for young adults and its heroine Kit, a young woman in an alternate Winnipeg. Publisher's description: "Kit has escaped her death sentence with the Yakone, only to be captured by the barbaric Rangi. Now a prisoner of war, her only means of survival will pit her against everyone and everything she holds dear--including herself." Of Downburst, Kirkus Reviews wrote: "[Robison's] debut takes flight, leaving readers eager for the next installment. A thrilling head-rush of an adventure."
Professor Emeritus Marty Roth
Contours of Privacy: The Ethnography of a Social and Aesthetic Concept
Academica Press, 2012
Book News Inc.: "Marty Roth presents a concise survey of privacy as a topic in literature, science, and public life. In his introduction, he briefly explains how the book responds to a flood of concern about privacy in an era of public narcissism, where the personal is political and information technology is ubiquitous. He describes his approach as intellectual ethnography, where he presents an idea (what is privacy?) and reflects on it through a survey of influential writing. It is more of a survey than a genealogy though, and draws on fiction as well as nonfiction. It is a thought-provoking read about privacy in the surveillance era."
Anne Marie Spidahl (as Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon) (PhD candidate)Nothing
Two Dollar Radio Press, 2013
Publishers Weekly: "Nothing, an edgy debut from Cauchon, follows Bridget and Ruth ('The first time I saw Bridget,' Ruth narrates, 'I knew right away we'd be best friends. Or enemies') as they stumble in and out of parties under the influence of booze and pills, not enough food or self-respect, and a vicious anger that manifests in Ruth as something more like desire. Oppressive smoke from nearby wildfires grows ever denser, the story's ticking bomb. James, a wanderer with a stolen gun and a wallet full of his stepfather's cash, heads Bridget and Ruth's way, tracking his dead biological father, guided by a handful of photographs and the rumors of some hobos. . . . Cauchon's characters have serrated edges; they're impossible to like, but they'll get under the reader's skin." (Nov.)
Joyce Sutphen (BA 1982, MA 1993, PhD 1996)After Words
Red Dragonfly Press, 2013
Elizabeth Hoover in the Minneapolis Star Tribune: "Like a landscape painter smoothing her brush stroke, Sutphen crafts poems to display content, not show off poetic techniques. Her sonnets are so natural that readers could easily miss the form. Sutphen's limpid descriptions make these scenes of rural Minnesota accessible to even the most urban reader. She uses resonant images to carry the emotional weight of her poems, leaving them uncluttered by commentary. . . . [T]hese poems argue that profundity exists in the everyday and that these lives--simple though they seem from the outside--are valuable and rich."
Elisabeth Workman (MFA candidate)
Any Rip a Threshhold [chapbook]
Shirt Pocket Press, 2013
Publisher's description: "Elisabeth Workman should be illegal. She fact checks the dirty core of transmissions from the outer realm. Directed at the body, performed with the body, rooting from the body, her work comes to a robust head of snakes. This chapbook is a poem, a list, a list of poems, a love letter, a eulogy, a case of mail fraud. We're sure it will eventually be used as evidence somehow. Exhibit A."
