Road Ahead/Unsplash Reviewed by Scott Neuffer Nevada poet and essayist Dani Putney takes documentary poetics to a new level in Mix-Mix (Baobab Press, 2025). By documentary, I mean a certain relation to historical reality, which is not to say this is historical poetry. It is vivid poetry — lyrical, cynical, ironic, touching, sexy. Because the poet approaches history with all senses and emotions aflame, with heart beating beneath the inquiry, letting itself be known, the result

Jeswin Thomas Reviewed by Scott Neuffer Tolu Oloruntoba’s new poetry collection, Unravel (McClelland & Stewart), offers something strangely mesmerizing — a deconstructed mind tethered to what it haunts. It’s a dynamic collection impossible to pin down but about which I can provide some descriptions that hopefully point to certain forces of a groundbreaking work. Oloruntoba, a trampset contributor, describes himself on his website as a lapsed physician. He practiced medicine i

Zdeněk Macháček Sensitive Creatures by Kirsten Reneau; Belle Point Press, 2024 Reviewed by L Mari Harris trampset published Kirsten Reneau’s opening essay “What I Remember” because we recognized a voice that needed to be heard. Now, she has presented us with the gift of a full-length essay collection, entitled Sensitive Creatures, published by Belle Point Press. Sensitive Creatures contains twenty-one essays, each effortlessly weaving together the human world and the natural

Anne Nygård Too Much Tongue by Adrienne Marie Barrios and Leigh Chadwick, Autofocus, 2022 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer I’ve never read anything like Too Much Tongue, a collaborative series of untitled prose poems by trampset contributors Adrienne Marie Barrios and Leigh Chadwick. Reading it is like finding a nest in your refrigerator, slapping yourself to wake up, then noticing how each wispy thread of the nest is throbbing, changing color. A feeling of magic emerges, concurrent

Walter Martin Just Outside the Tunnel of Love by Francine Witte, Blue Light Press, 2023 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer To say I know what makes good flash fiction would be a lie. I have no sheet of metrics, no firm rules. One of the Internet’s most popular literary forms, flash fiction appears to have the economy of poetry, the weight of each line, but also narrative leaps reminiscent of novels. Flash fiction does less than the longer short story in terms of space but, given the r

Ricardo Cruz The Reluctant Journey of Manfred Bugsbee by Michael Farfel, Montag Press, 2022 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer Right off the bat, I will tell you: I’m not the best person to review this book. I don’t regularly read fantasy, and I recognize trampset contributor Michael Farfel’s The Reluctant Journey of Manfred Bugsbee is some kind of epic fantasy. That said, I enjoyed the book. And the fantasy genre elements I did recognize — arduous landscapes, battles, mythic swords —

The Australian National Maritime Museum Ambrotypes by Amy Cipolla Barnes, word west press, 2022 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer If inimitableness on the page is a sign of genius, then Amy Barnes is some kind of genius. To review her collection of stories, Ambrotypes, properly, I would need to get a stack of children’s construction paper, cut it to stars and shards using oversized antique scissors, soak it all with the spittle of a dying garden hose, then catapult the resulting mess

Bill Fairs The Book of Rusty by Benjamin Drevlow, Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2022 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer Well, I’m not a Jack Mormon. I’m an apostate, which is different. Seeing Benjamin Drevlow’s 2022 novel of sorts, The Book of Rusty, formatted like The Book of Mormon is fun. It is fun because Rusty is a miscreant with no wisdom to impart. He is a pervert. He is highly offensive. In fact, I’m not sure I like Rusty. He wallows in the tragedy of his brother’s suicide. He has a

Jacek Dylag Poems for the People by Nicole Tallman, Southern Collective Experience, 2023 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer “Not bad” says Dale Tallman, poet Nicole Tallman’s father, in the introductory blurbs to her new collection, Poems for the People. It is this spirit of fun that carries the collection forward. Here is a clear, candid, funny voice exploring what it means to address readers on the page. Poems for the People is less a political tract and more a colorful convocation.

Ashkan Forouzani Talking to Ghosts at Parties by Rick White, Storgy, 2022 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer I’m trying to quit smoking while writing this book review. I want words to be enough, spiritual entities that, like ghosts, animate the moment. But how I crave the smoldering wreck of a well-smoked cigarette, the way one crushes the butt into concrete, leaving a black smear. Words are not enough: images on the verge of flight pulled back to the shore of embodied reality, the gr

Dom Fou Time as a Sort of Enemy by Tyler Dempsey, Gob Pile Press, 2022 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer Tyler Dempsey’s new story collection snaps with dark energy, leaving the texture of dried blood on the mind’s fingers. The eight stories in the collection range from a scrappy, elliptical prose style to more sprawling stream-of-consciousness constructions, and they plumb settings from the Midwest to Mexico City to the advent of Internet life. What could be called satirical in thes

Nick Fewings Best Microfiction 2021 edited by Meg Pokrass, Gary Fincke and Amber Sparks, Pelekinesis, 2021 Reviewed by Kate Blackwood Why to read Best Microfiction 2021 is clear enough: here we have in one volume 102 of the most remarkable small fictions published in the past year, thoughtfully chosen and artfully arranged by guest editor Amber Sparks and series editors Meg Pokrass and Gary Fincke. And 2021 is a particularly exciting time for microfiction, with several of t

Fazly Shah One Person Away from You: Stories by Andrew Bertaina, Moon City Press, 2021 Reviewed by Andrew Gretes Andrew Bertaina’s debut short-story collection, One Person Away from You (winner of the 2020 Moon City Short Fiction Award), is the answer to the counterfactual: “What if Proust wrote flash?” Like Proust’s wayward narrator, Bertaina’s characters are simultaneously pursuing and pursued by the past, and it’s precisely this position (smack in the middle of the tempora

The Northern Line: Stories by Mike Lee, Atmosphere Press, 2021 Reviewed by MK Sturdevant “I could see the hole. I knew it was a plane.”— from “The Details of Time” I made a decade-long career out of understanding and teaching seventeenth-century early modern philosophy. I know exactly what to say about the year 1641, but until reading Mike Lee’s collection of stories, I had no idea what to say about 2002, or 1997, or 1988, years in which I actually existed (a category of exi

Fer Troulik Cabinet of Wrath: A Doll Collection by Tara Campbell, Aqueduct Press, 2021 Reviewed by Katharine Blair In my early twenties I worked for a year in a convent-run Home for Unwed Mothers, which is odd given that I was neither religious nor living in the Victorian age, but need does as need must and at that point what need needed was money for school. I’d be a mother myself two years later. Wed, if you’re nosy, like I tend to be. Any birth story — ask me, if you like

Scott Neuffer Salamat sa Intersectionality by Dani Putney, Okay Donkey Press, 2021 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer In their debut poetry collection, Dani Putney renders the American West new. Blending a philosophical, musing mind with a deep love for concrete particulars in a landscape — namely the geology and flora of Nevada —  Salamat sa Intersectionality offers an utterly beautiful and transformative revision of the strange place we both call home. Divided into three sections,

Ganapathy Kumar Medusa Retold by Sarah Wallis, Fly on the Wall Press, 2020 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer Greek myth can be cruel to women. Take Medusa, for instance. Abused by the gods and turned into a monster. Weaponized to turn others to stone. Scotland-based poet Sarah Wallis inverts this myth in her highly imaginative coming-to-age chapbook, Medusa Retold . Meet Nuala, the heroine of this long-form narrative poem. A “headstrong girl with her outsize feelings for the sea and

by Scott Neuffer Олег Мороз Sarah Cavar is a fresh force in modern lit. Those familiar with their work know they bring vivid poetic energy to the page along with a scalpel-sharp analytical mind — the mind of a literary theorist deconstructing notions of gender and identity mixed with the sensibility of a surrealist poet. Cavar has two new prose chapbooks that together offer a deep dive into the human psyche — riveting and unforgettable. A Hole Walked In , Sword and Kettle Pre

Liana S Love and Endless Love by Lilia Marie Ellis, giallo, 2021 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer The two epigraphs of Lilia Marie Ellis’ bold and beautiful chapbook, Love and Endless Love , come from Corinthians and Virginia Woolf’s The Waves . Like both these texts, Lilia’s book has an epic spiritual scope as the poet confronts pain and cruelty with an amazing spirit of resilience. Formalistically, these poems reveal a distinct style, shaped almost as stream-of-conscious prose po

Patrick Pierre Letters to My Lover from Behind Asylum Walls by Robin Sinclair, Cosmographia, 2018 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer As a Bipolar I individual, now treated, I often recall my visits to the state psychiatric ward, the phantasmagoric experience of losing one’s mind. It’s hard to describe to people who’ve never been through it. It’s like your subconscious vomits, a purge of the soul, and you bend to the force of your own hallucinations. The objective world waits on the p