Donald Revell’s translation of Rimbaud’s The Illuminations (Omnidawn 2009) was reviewed in Poetry Flash here.
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Congrats to Omnidawn author, Randall Silvis, on his new novel Hangtime (Kitsune Books):
“Randall Silvis’s Hangtime: A Confession is an aria of literary Schadenfreude…. Fortunately, Silvis recognizes that his book cannot be an unending string of failures and deconstruction of failures. He has laced Hangtime with humorous and thought-provoking asides…. The frequent interjections of highbrow cleverness bring levity and wisdom to Hangtime. As demonstrated across his previous novels, Silvis is an excellent craftsman of smart and smart-mouthed narrative…. Hangtime provides what many readers of literary fiction enjoy: clever writing and informed send-ups of academia and the classics. More important, Hangtime has what we want (but might not admit to wanting): it plays to our Schadenfreude…. Hangtime flatters our erudite self-image and caters to our dark side.” New York Journal of Books
Randall Silvis is “as prolific as he is good, especially when he unfurls a series of the looping, melodic sentences at which he so excels…. Among its many virtues, Hangtime’s last forty pages contain some of the finest prose on fathers and sons you’ll ever read.” Great Lakes Life
Plus this endorsement from Pulitzer Prize nominee William Allen: “There’s genius in this book. The writing is like a melding of J. P. Donleavy and Lawrence Durrell. Silvis is reaching way out there, still growing and becoming more innovative with every book, and expressing a depth of thought beyond the reach of most modern writers. He may be the last of a dying species, the creative genius.” William Allen, author of Starkweather and The Fire In the Birdbath