Gentlemen Callers by Corinne Hoex, trans. Caitlin O’Neil (Dalkey Archive Press, March 2022)
“Humor is culturally specific, temporally tied, and situationally contextual, and all of these facets are amplified in the context of translation, where puns and plays become tangled in tongues. This is what makes Gentlemen Callers . . . a truly astonishing outlier. While French literature enjoys a fairly prolific publication rate in English, the kinds of literature chosen for publication are often cerebral, philosophical, and introspective. Hoex’s series of vignettes, too, are interiorized, in that they are dreamworlds, but they are also fleshy, sensuous, and gilded with a teasing tone firmly rooted (pun intended) in sexual exploration and fulfillment.”—Asymptote
Jordemoder: Poems of a Midwife by Ingrid Andersson (Holy Cow! Press, April 2022)
“At the heart of Jordemoder is the crossroads where the midwife works, the knife edge where a breath taken, or not, determines a celebration of birth and new life, or the loss and grief of death. Andersson inhabits that crossroads and writes from there with precision, empathy, and grace.”—Wisconsin People & Ideas