Cleveland Review of Books
@clereviewbooks.bsky.social
the cleveland of reviews of books
clereviewofbooks.com
clereviewofbooks.com
"Wong’s West Coast novel and Geoghegan’s East-Coast-turned-Midwest memoir are both preoccupied with the experience of being just on the outside of a movement, not quite at the center but not quite separate from its concerns."
-Lillian Lippold
clereviewofbooks.com/which-side-a...
-Lillian Lippold
clereviewofbooks.com/which-side-a...
Circuits of Solidarity - Cleveland Review of Books
There is no middle ground, so ambiguous players must take sides.
clereviewofbooks.com
December 2, 2025 at 4:00 PM
"Wong’s West Coast novel and Geoghegan’s East-Coast-turned-Midwest memoir are both preoccupied with the experience of being just on the outside of a movement, not quite at the center but not quite separate from its concerns."
-Lillian Lippold
clereviewofbooks.com/which-side-a...
-Lillian Lippold
clereviewofbooks.com/which-side-a...
Reposted by Cleveland Review of Books
MARK YOUR CALENDARS 🗓️
Fiction candidate Willow Campbell will be reading at the Cleveland launch party of @clereviewbooks.bsky.social’s latest issue 🎙️📓
12/14 @ 6:30 @ Dunlap’s Corner Bar
See you there 🧐
Fiction candidate Willow Campbell will be reading at the Cleveland launch party of @clereviewbooks.bsky.social’s latest issue 🎙️📓
12/14 @ 6:30 @ Dunlap’s Corner Bar
See you there 🧐
December 1, 2025 at 1:49 PM
MARK YOUR CALENDARS 🗓️
Fiction candidate Willow Campbell will be reading at the Cleveland launch party of @clereviewbooks.bsky.social’s latest issue 🎙️📓
12/14 @ 6:30 @ Dunlap’s Corner Bar
See you there 🧐
Fiction candidate Willow Campbell will be reading at the Cleveland launch party of @clereviewbooks.bsky.social’s latest issue 🎙️📓
12/14 @ 6:30 @ Dunlap’s Corner Bar
See you there 🧐
"The chickens are organizing a game. It appears to be a putt putt tournament, or something like it. A hybrid of poker and minigolf. At this point, I realize my plan has backfired."
from "From the Pocket of Agent Dickinson" by Zack Darcee and Elise Houcek
clereviewofbooks.com/from-from-th...
from "From the Pocket of Agent Dickinson" by Zack Darcee and Elise Houcek
clereviewofbooks.com/from-from-th...
from "From the Pocket of Agent Dickinson" - Cleveland Review of Books
My wires reach her brain. It is a brain of Nothingness. In there go the dictionaries.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 28, 2025 at 12:35 PM
"The chickens are organizing a game. It appears to be a putt putt tournament, or something like it. A hybrid of poker and minigolf. At this point, I realize my plan has backfired."
from "From the Pocket of Agent Dickinson" by Zack Darcee and Elise Houcek
clereviewofbooks.com/from-from-th...
from "From the Pocket of Agent Dickinson" by Zack Darcee and Elise Houcek
clereviewofbooks.com/from-from-th...
Reposted by Cleveland Review of Books
Jeff Alessandrelli's essay remembering Alice Notley at @clereviewbooks.bsky.social is really moving & so full of Alice's presence.
In the background of Jeff's piece is another story: small press publishing changes our lives & our shared world.
clereviewofbooks.com/alice-notley...
In the background of Jeff's piece is another story: small press publishing changes our lives & our shared world.
clereviewofbooks.com/alice-notley...
Alice Notley's Symphonic Everything - Cleveland Review of Books
The sometimes garrulous, sometimes insolent, sometimes exuberant New York School style that the beginning part of her career largely lived within was not her go-to poetic mode in the last decades of h...
clereviewofbooks.com
November 27, 2025 at 12:41 AM
Jeff Alessandrelli's essay remembering Alice Notley at @clereviewbooks.bsky.social is really moving & so full of Alice's presence.
In the background of Jeff's piece is another story: small press publishing changes our lives & our shared world.
clereviewofbooks.com/alice-notley...
In the background of Jeff's piece is another story: small press publishing changes our lives & our shared world.
clereviewofbooks.com/alice-notley...
"Rage can be just as much a lifeforce as pleasure".
Alyse Burnside On David Wojnarowicz’s “Memories that Smell Like Gasoline”
clereviewofbooks.com/david-wojnar...
Alyse Burnside On David Wojnarowicz’s “Memories that Smell Like Gasoline”
clereviewofbooks.com/david-wojnar...
A Ticking Clock: On David Wojnarowicz’s “Memories that Smell Like Gasoline” - Cleveland Review of Books
It is a drive David identifies with, one that draws him towards those who do not understand or adhere to the manufactured code of conduct of society.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 25, 2025 at 1:03 PM
"Rage can be just as much a lifeforce as pleasure".
Alyse Burnside On David Wojnarowicz’s “Memories that Smell Like Gasoline”
clereviewofbooks.com/david-wojnar...
Alyse Burnside On David Wojnarowicz’s “Memories that Smell Like Gasoline”
clereviewofbooks.com/david-wojnar...
"Romano’s memoir is an early example of feminist life writing, comparable to the work of not just of Ernaux, but also the memoirs of Simone de Beauvoir and the autobiography of Marguerite Duras."
Eliza Browning on Lalla Romano's "In Farthest Seas"
clereviewofbooks.com/lalla-romano...
Eliza Browning on Lalla Romano's "In Farthest Seas"
clereviewofbooks.com/lalla-romano...
Minima Mortalia: On Lalla Romano’s “In Farthest Seas” - Cleveland Review of Books
The impression is that Romano is attempting to stretch time in order to prolong her husband's life, summoning memories of his past selves as a form of resistance against death.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 21, 2025 at 12:50 AM
"Romano’s memoir is an early example of feminist life writing, comparable to the work of not just of Ernaux, but also the memoirs of Simone de Beauvoir and the autobiography of Marguerite Duras."
Eliza Browning on Lalla Romano's "In Farthest Seas"
clereviewofbooks.com/lalla-romano...
Eliza Browning on Lalla Romano's "In Farthest Seas"
clereviewofbooks.com/lalla-romano...
"In fact, once he knows he has Mare and Bern completely under his spell, he sends them on errands. For a serial killer, he is incredibly lazy about the necessities of everyday life, like money and food."
from "Their Many Names" by Jess Richardson
clereviewofbooks.com/their-many-n...
from "Their Many Names" by Jess Richardson
clereviewofbooks.com/their-many-n...
Their Many Names - Cleveland Review of Books
She did not know her future husband owned a gun, but he briefly served and so it makes a sudden kind of sense.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 19, 2025 at 4:47 PM
"In fact, once he knows he has Mare and Bern completely under his spell, he sends them on errands. For a serial killer, he is incredibly lazy about the necessities of everyday life, like money and food."
from "Their Many Names" by Jess Richardson
clereviewofbooks.com/their-many-n...
from "Their Many Names" by Jess Richardson
clereviewofbooks.com/their-many-n...
Reposted by Cleveland Review of Books
community mausoleum is putting out some of the best stuff rn--I loved this book.
Temptation fragrant energy Floribunda in memory Floribunda remind me / Madame madame in memory of all America shrub flag line bangs wind
from "Deadheading" by Jon Conley
clereviewofbooks.com/from-deadhea...
from "Deadheading" by Jon Conley
clereviewofbooks.com/from-deadhea...
from "Deadheading" - Cleveland Review of Books
Madame madame in memory of all America shrub flag line bangs wind
clereviewofbooks.com
November 17, 2025 at 2:27 PM
community mausoleum is putting out some of the best stuff rn--I loved this book.
"What [New Romantics] are calling for is not a simple resurgence of feeling, a giving of ourselves over to every passion we have, but rather a conversion of desire."
John-Paul Heil on Joshua Wren, Sally Thomas, and "New Romanticism"
clereviewofbooks.com/new-romantic...
John-Paul Heil on Joshua Wren, Sally Thomas, and "New Romanticism"
clereviewofbooks.com/new-romantic...
New Romantics in the Thick Real: On Joshua Hren and Sally Thomas - Cleveland Review of Books
New Romanticism is attentive to those transcendent wants for things that will truly fulfill us regardless of time, place, or social circumstance.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 18, 2025 at 4:49 PM
"What [New Romantics] are calling for is not a simple resurgence of feeling, a giving of ourselves over to every passion we have, but rather a conversion of desire."
John-Paul Heil on Joshua Wren, Sally Thomas, and "New Romanticism"
clereviewofbooks.com/new-romantic...
John-Paul Heil on Joshua Wren, Sally Thomas, and "New Romanticism"
clereviewofbooks.com/new-romantic...
CRB 3.2: Revolutionary poetics, the Paris Commune, containers as cultural memory, feminist unsexing of language, the ethics of digression, grief as technology, art in munitions bunkers. If you flip through it fast, the stars spin. Welcome to the zoetrope.
November 17, 2025 at 5:49 PM
CRB 3.2: Revolutionary poetics, the Paris Commune, containers as cultural memory, feminist unsexing of language, the ethics of digression, grief as technology, art in munitions bunkers. If you flip through it fast, the stars spin. Welcome to the zoetrope.
“One of the ironies of his posthumous reputation is that, to be read and accepted by canonical scholarship, James had to be embraced by scholars whose views ran directly counter to his own.” — Peter Huhne on two new critical perspectives on Henry James both from
@NYRB_Imprints
@NYRB_Imprints
November 14, 2025 at 7:38 PM
“One of the ironies of his posthumous reputation is that, to be read and accepted by canonical scholarship, James had to be embraced by scholars whose views ran directly counter to his own.” — Peter Huhne on two new critical perspectives on Henry James both from
@NYRB_Imprints
@NYRB_Imprints
I. was 9 when I fell
from the window
for language.
from "Vision Sans Seraphim" by Jed Munson.
clereviewofbooks.com/from-vision-...
from the window
for language.
from "Vision Sans Seraphim" by Jed Munson.
clereviewofbooks.com/from-vision-...
from "Vision Sans Seraphim" - Cleveland Review of Books
I. was 9 when I fell from the window for language.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 12, 2025 at 10:47 PM
I. was 9 when I fell
from the window
for language.
from "Vision Sans Seraphim" by Jed Munson.
clereviewofbooks.com/from-vision-...
from the window
for language.
from "Vision Sans Seraphim" by Jed Munson.
clereviewofbooks.com/from-vision-...
"The poets grapple with what it means to create a purpose-built archive and the ways in which this impulse counters the traditional principle of the archive."
Megan McKenzie on "Permanent Record"
clereviewofbooks.com/read-backwar...
Megan McKenzie on "Permanent Record"
clereviewofbooks.com/read-backwar...
Read Backwards: on “Permanent Record” - Cleveland Review of Books
The human impulse towards self-documentation is everywhere once you start looking for it.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 6, 2025 at 8:45 PM
"The poets grapple with what it means to create a purpose-built archive and the ways in which this impulse counters the traditional principle of the archive."
Megan McKenzie on "Permanent Record"
clereviewofbooks.com/read-backwar...
Megan McKenzie on "Permanent Record"
clereviewofbooks.com/read-backwar...
Reposted by Cleveland Review of Books
In @clereviewbooks.bsky.social, a deeply original dive into Don DeLillo’s JFK assassination epic Libra in the form of “twelve bullets, four appendices, and six exhibits.” “DeLillo’s Libra is a book about the entanglement of reading, writing, and living,” Nicole Kaack explains.
Twelve Bullets, Four Appendices, and Six Exhibits: On Don DeLillo’s “Libra” - Cleveland Review of Books
Writers, like lone gunmen, are compulsive worldbuilders. They write their own past, present, and future. DeLillo has described himself as a man in a small room.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 5, 2025 at 9:30 PM
In @clereviewbooks.bsky.social, a deeply original dive into Don DeLillo’s JFK assassination epic Libra in the form of “twelve bullets, four appendices, and six exhibits.” “DeLillo’s Libra is a book about the entanglement of reading, writing, and living,” Nicole Kaack explains.
"These plots I conceive easily
They describe action
As original as the sun’s constant production
The bells that ring across the estuary
Draw the hours in and together"
Three Poems by Hannah Piette
clereviewofbooks.com/three-poems-2/
They describe action
As original as the sun’s constant production
The bells that ring across the estuary
Draw the hours in and together"
Three Poems by Hannah Piette
clereviewofbooks.com/three-poems-2/
Three Poems - Cleveland Review of Books
Forests moderate speech / By way of the soil.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 5, 2025 at 3:38 PM
"These plots I conceive easily
They describe action
As original as the sun’s constant production
The bells that ring across the estuary
Draw the hours in and together"
Three Poems by Hannah Piette
clereviewofbooks.com/three-poems-2/
They describe action
As original as the sun’s constant production
The bells that ring across the estuary
Draw the hours in and together"
Three Poems by Hannah Piette
clereviewofbooks.com/three-poems-2/
"Randolph Healy deserves to get noticed. The Ireland-raised poet and math teacher—who will turn 70 next year—has been assembling thoughtful, counterintuitive poems, short and long, into small press volumes since the 1980s."
Stephanie Burt on Randolph Healy
clereviewofbooks.com/stephanie-bu...
Stephanie Burt on Randolph Healy
clereviewofbooks.com/stephanie-bu...
It’s Better to Stay Many-Minded: On Randolph Healy’s "The Electron-Ghost Casino" - Cleveland Review of Books
Some poets get noticed easily, early on. Their work speaks to the moment, or to the zeitgeist, or to a nation’s or a generation’s sense of itself.
clereviewofbooks.com
November 4, 2025 at 2:58 PM
"Randolph Healy deserves to get noticed. The Ireland-raised poet and math teacher—who will turn 70 next year—has been assembling thoughtful, counterintuitive poems, short and long, into small press volumes since the 1980s."
Stephanie Burt on Randolph Healy
clereviewofbooks.com/stephanie-bu...
Stephanie Burt on Randolph Healy
clereviewofbooks.com/stephanie-bu...
"Canetti obsessively writing the same phrase, in slightly different permutations, decades apart; me, attempting again and again to capture my grandmother—where does that impulse come from, the need to record?"
Emma Heath on Elias Canetti and death
clereviewofbooks.com/elias-canett...
Emma Heath on Elias Canetti and death
clereviewofbooks.com/elias-canett...
Death Recorded: On Elias Canetti’s “The Book Against Death” - Cleveland Review of Books
When my grandmother died, I too had this impulse—to record everything she said, and everything said about her death. I would stop in the middle of the street in order to write down my mother’s updates...
clereviewofbooks.com
November 3, 2025 at 7:02 PM
"Canetti obsessively writing the same phrase, in slightly different permutations, decades apart; me, attempting again and again to capture my grandmother—where does that impulse come from, the need to record?"
Emma Heath on Elias Canetti and death
clereviewofbooks.com/elias-canett...
Emma Heath on Elias Canetti and death
clereviewofbooks.com/elias-canett...
Temptation fragrant energy Floribunda in memory Floribunda remind me / Madame madame in memory of all America shrub flag line bangs wind
from "Deadheading" by Jon Conley
clereviewofbooks.com/from-deadhea...
from "Deadheading" by Jon Conley
clereviewofbooks.com/from-deadhea...
from "Deadheading" - Cleveland Review of Books
Madame madame in memory of all America shrub flag line bangs wind
clereviewofbooks.com
October 29, 2025 at 1:59 PM
Temptation fragrant energy Floribunda in memory Floribunda remind me / Madame madame in memory of all America shrub flag line bangs wind
from "Deadheading" by Jon Conley
clereviewofbooks.com/from-deadhea...
from "Deadheading" by Jon Conley
clereviewofbooks.com/from-deadhea...
"Sometimes when I think of Midwestern in terms of being proud that you’re from the Midwest, I think of breweries, and coffee shops, and things that are very branded in this way that then became described as Williamsburg."
Chris Molnar interviews Natasha Stagg
clereviewofbooks.com/garage-rock-...
Chris Molnar interviews Natasha Stagg
clereviewofbooks.com/garage-rock-...
Garage Rock and Grand Rapids: An Interview with Natasha Stagg - Cleveland Review of Books
They do not have a next stop. They just have to die now.
clereviewofbooks.com
October 28, 2025 at 2:34 PM
"Sometimes when I think of Midwestern in terms of being proud that you’re from the Midwest, I think of breweries, and coffee shops, and things that are very branded in this way that then became described as Williamsburg."
Chris Molnar interviews Natasha Stagg
clereviewofbooks.com/garage-rock-...
Chris Molnar interviews Natasha Stagg
clereviewofbooks.com/garage-rock-...
Give a sailor’s greeting to the contributors of CRB Vol. 3.2. This here list looks a little something like the mag's back cover. By subscribing, you'll get this issue in your mailbox, soon. Use the discount code THEBIRDS to get 30% off any level.
October 27, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Give a sailor’s greeting to the contributors of CRB Vol. 3.2. This here list looks a little something like the mag's back cover. By subscribing, you'll get this issue in your mailbox, soon. Use the discount code THEBIRDS to get 30% off any level.
"Kojève’s reflections on the conditions of politically meaningful action and philosophy speak to our current zeitgeist where history seems neither dead nor alive."
Alexander Aerts on Kojéve's "Kant"
clereviewofbooks.com/less-chatter...
Alexander Aerts on Kojéve's "Kant"
clereviewofbooks.com/less-chatter...
Less Chatter, More Action: on Alexandre Kojève’s "Kant" - Cleveland Review of Books
One has to reckon with a postmodern condition of meaninglessness and feeling of being too late to the party.
clereviewofbooks.com
October 26, 2025 at 7:10 PM
"Kojève’s reflections on the conditions of politically meaningful action and philosophy speak to our current zeitgeist where history seems neither dead nor alive."
Alexander Aerts on Kojéve's "Kant"
clereviewofbooks.com/less-chatter...
Alexander Aerts on Kojéve's "Kant"
clereviewofbooks.com/less-chatter...
Reposted by Cleveland Review of Books
This is great 🙏🏽
"Contemporary manosphere literature certainly paints a landscape of patriarchy in crisis, at war with itself about how it should wield its own power."
Leah Abrams, "Into the Manosphere—in Manuscripts"
clereviewofbooks.com/into-the-man...
Leah Abrams, "Into the Manosphere—in Manuscripts"
clereviewofbooks.com/into-the-man...
Into the Manosphere—in Manuscripts - Cleveland Review of Books
Contemporary manosphere literature certainly paints a landscape of patriarchy in crisis, at war with itself about how it should wield its own power.
clereviewofbooks.com
October 24, 2025 at 3:45 PM
This is great 🙏🏽
“The Nobel Prize is fitting, if anything: Alfred Nobel established the prize out of guilt as a 'death merchant,' and now our greatest novelist of decay and destruction has been given the dynamite money.”
Evan Grillon on Krasznahorkai
clereviewofbooks.com/laszlo-krasz...
Evan Grillon on Krasznahorkai
clereviewofbooks.com/laszlo-krasz...
Tiny Apocalypses: On László Krasznahorkai's "Herscht 07769" - Cleveland Review of Books
His books have prophesied dooms big and small for forty years now, much to the annoyance of our century's chummy optimists and milquetoast novelists obsessed with their own private misery and campus p...
clereviewofbooks.com
October 23, 2025 at 11:05 PM
“The Nobel Prize is fitting, if anything: Alfred Nobel established the prize out of guilt as a 'death merchant,' and now our greatest novelist of decay and destruction has been given the dynamite money.”
Evan Grillon on Krasznahorkai
clereviewofbooks.com/laszlo-krasz...
Evan Grillon on Krasznahorkai
clereviewofbooks.com/laszlo-krasz...
"My cat wasn’t lost but everyone in the neighborhood kept calling me. “I found your cat,” they said, and then they would describe my cat to me."
from "Hurricane Envy" by Sarah Jaffe (published by Rescue Press)
clereviewofbooks.com/from-hurrica...
from "Hurricane Envy" by Sarah Jaffe (published by Rescue Press)
clereviewofbooks.com/from-hurrica...
from "Hurricane Envy" - Cleveland Review of Books
And my kids have food, whatever they want.
clereviewofbooks.com
October 22, 2025 at 2:26 PM
"My cat wasn’t lost but everyone in the neighborhood kept calling me. “I found your cat,” they said, and then they would describe my cat to me."
from "Hurricane Envy" by Sarah Jaffe (published by Rescue Press)
clereviewofbooks.com/from-hurrica...
from "Hurricane Envy" by Sarah Jaffe (published by Rescue Press)
clereviewofbooks.com/from-hurrica...
"Contemporary manosphere literature certainly paints a landscape of patriarchy in crisis, at war with itself about how it should wield its own power."
Leah Abrams, "Into the Manosphere—in Manuscripts"
clereviewofbooks.com/into-the-man...
Leah Abrams, "Into the Manosphere—in Manuscripts"
clereviewofbooks.com/into-the-man...
Into the Manosphere—in Manuscripts - Cleveland Review of Books
Contemporary manosphere literature certainly paints a landscape of patriarchy in crisis, at war with itself about how it should wield its own power.
clereviewofbooks.com
October 21, 2025 at 2:12 PM
"Contemporary manosphere literature certainly paints a landscape of patriarchy in crisis, at war with itself about how it should wield its own power."
Leah Abrams, "Into the Manosphere—in Manuscripts"
clereviewofbooks.com/into-the-man...
Leah Abrams, "Into the Manosphere—in Manuscripts"
clereviewofbooks.com/into-the-man...