USEREVIEW Archive

TRADITIONAL REVIEWS 001 — K.B. Thors reviews Takako Arai‘s Factory Girls (Action Books, 2019) 004 — John Nyman reviews Klara du Plessis‘ Hell Light Flesh (Palimpsest Press, 2020)007 — Manahil Bandukwala reviews Lily Wang’s Saturn Peach (Gordon Hill Press, 2020)010 — Sanchari Sur reviews Aditi Machado’s Emporium (Nightboat Books, 2020)013 — Conyer Clayton reviews Nicole Haldoupis’ Tiny Ruins (Radiant Press, 2020)018 — Mark Laliberte reviews Sacha Archer’s Mother’s Milk (Timglaset Editions, 2020)019 — Julie McIsaac

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From the Archive: Sandy Pool (CAROUSEL 40)

SANDY POOL Excerpt from The Ebbinghaus Illusion: A Book of Hybrid Non-Fiction The Ebbinghaus Illusion elegizes the death of my former partner who suffered from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. After a short battle, my partner chose to take his life, rather than suffer the debilitating effects of the disease. The Ebbinghaus Illusion is structured around a standardized Alzheimer’s memory test. Each piece is titled with a word from the Alzheimer’s word list, which is used to

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From the Archive: Amy Ireland ‘The Stranger’ Interview (CAROUSEL 39)

Amy Ireland is an experimental poet and theorist, co-conspiring with arcane and esoteric vectors of poetic and theoretical thought. As a PhD Candidate in Creative Writing at the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales, Ireland’s work develops concepts embedded within the prefix xeno-, denoting that which is unfamiliar, strange and alien. Following this trajectory, Ireland is writing her thesis on xenopoetics, which engages various poetry projects that involve

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From the Archive: Dash Shaw Interview (CAROUSEL 39)

“I wanted to be destroyed … and reborn.” Dash Shaw credits these words to a tattered old comic book, near the end of Cosplayers, a recent collection of his own comics about fan culture, cartooning history, creativity, and female friendship. Shaw’s teen girl protagonists have lucked into a stash of funnybooks by the legendary Jack ‘King’ Kirby (1917–1994), co-creator of the Fantastic Four, Captain America, and, in this instance, the 2001 comic book adaptation. Heedless

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From the Archive: Anders Nilsen Interview (CAROUSEL 37)

Anders Nilsen is a notable American graphic novelist whose works include Big Questions, Dogs and Water, Don’t Go Where I Can’t Follow, Rage of Poseidon, The End, and others. In Poetry is Useless, his latest book, Nilsen redefines the sketchbook format, intermingling elegant, densely detailed renderings of mythical animals, short comics drawn in ink, meditations on religion, and abstract shapes and patterns. This expansive ‘sketchbook-as-graphic-novel’ reveals seven years of Nilsen’s life and musings: it covers

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From the Archive: Mallory Tater (CAROUSEL 37)

MALLORY TATER The Last Nickel Geraldine’s black bather sticks to her chapped skin. Her thighs burn rogue with saltwater rashes. The water isn’t good to her but she loves it anyway. She walks her path to the seawall, one-at-a-times each stone step down to the shore. She feels a shifting in the land, but she isn’t afraid of it. Kelp and purple claw-weed accumulate in bundles, thick and dirty like doll’s hair. Geraldine wades until

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From the Archive: Ben Ladouceur (CAROUSEL 36)

BEN LADOUCEUR 461 Margueretta Street There’s the house there’s the way into the house.Hot head blood a difficult decision being responded to.We are hurting men we house and cause great woe.The moss growing by one millimetre every warm year.Harder to tell when you’re away plus I care less too.Inert things proceed no regard for human assent.God will not fail to take such a martyrdom into account.You create a fluid place it inside me leave it

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From the Archive: Klaus Pichler ‘All Dressed Up with Nowhere to Go’ (CAROUSEL 35)

Viennese photographer Klaus Pichler’s intimate photo series, Just the Two of Us, aims to reveal the people beneath a variety of costumes without unmasking them. For adults, the act of dressing up in costume is most often associated with some form of social activity. It’s a spectacle, a transformative activity that grants us permission to temporarily play out a fantasy role in the everyday world. Costumes and disguises permit people to act in ways that

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From the Archive: Leah Jane Esau (CAROUSEL 35)

LEAH JANE ESAU Letters to Your Brother Hour One: we aren’t sure what happens in the first hour he goes missing, because we aren’t there.       Does it happen because we aren’t there? • Hour One for you: a phone call.       You don’t answer because your shirt is on the floor of your boyfriend’s apartment. You let it ring three times and go to voicemail.       A few seconds later, it rings again.       Your boyfriend says, “Maybe you should see who

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From the Archive: Daniel Arsham ‘Relics for the Future’ (CAROUSEL 34)

From generating performances with choreographer and media artist Jonah Bokaer, to designing sets for Merce Cunningham, to having your work curated by pop-star Pharrell Williams, collaborations are a major element of Daniel Arsham’s practice — one of the many facets of a career that has swiftly rose to international attention. He’s also part of Snarkitecture, a collaborative effort with Alex Mustonen, which blends art and architecture to create installations that attempt to “make architecture perform

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From the Archive: Kim Fu (CAROUSEL 34)

KIM FU Lifecycle of the Mole-Woman: Infancy as a Human I’ve seen this waist-high grassand weeping tree before, in a drugstore frameand a Bollywood movie, the trunk a pivot pointfor coquettish hide and seek. On the coverof Vanity Fair it had a swing,just two ropes and a plank, a girl levitatingon the tip of her coccyx. Poofy virginalwhite dress, elegant lipstick slash, Cubist chin,she had it all. Someone proposed here,votive candles in a heart, a

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From the Archive: jp Rodriguez (CAROUSEL 34)

JP RODRIGUEZ The Heavens “Can’t believe you can stand a basement apartment,” I say to Rob, growing damn tired of waiting for Scott to make his word. Rob just murmurs away to his iEyes, either not hearing me, or hearing me but ignoring me. No. I’m sorry. I’m misrepresenting. I guess I didn’t say it at speaking volume. I must have murmured it, out of habit, and that’s why my iEyes have picked it up

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From the Archive: Chip Kidd ‘Gasp! You Did It!’ Interview (CAROUSEL 33)

Chip Kidd is a man of many talents, with an insider’s perspective on pop culture. Universally recognized as an American master of contemporary book design — USA Today once described him as “the closest thing to a rock star” in the graphic design world — his iconic covers offer an inventive marriage of type and found images. In addition, Kidd’s work as an editor of books of comics for the mass market have helped to

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From the Archive: Bess Winter (CAROUSEL 33)

BESS WINTER Daguerreotypes 1/ Hidden Mother A slight mother could be disguised as a swaddling blanket or a bassinet. A larger mother was an overstuffed chair, a settee, an imposing piece of furniture. Careless practitioners might toss a rug over the mother, barely cloaking her shape. Ill-disguised mothers looked like bodies smuggled in the night. But such mistakes were for amateurs. Sargent was an expert at hiding mothers.      For instance, once he was commissioned to photograph

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From the Archive: Sara Angelucci ‘Aviary’ (CAROUSEL 32)

Extinction. Such an outrageous word, and made common thanks to that Darwin fellow and his incredible theories. The word has the connotation of chances irrevocably gone. But the utter demise of the pigeons is an impossibility. Not even man could destroy such a quantity. Nothing has an utter end — not the pigeons, and certainly not the human soul, which continues on and ever on. — Claire Mulligan, The Dark (2013) There was a time

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From the Archive: Natalie Morrill (CAROUSEL 32)

NATALIE MORRILL Mrs. Fannie Winthrop, upon discovering that her husband is an octopus But she decides she mustn’t let him thinkit puts her off. She won’t throw the coversoff the thing, won’t draw undue attention, she,to his way of slithering gellish out their front doorMonday to Friday, radio twittering, him wavinghis hat — “Nice day, Fannie”: his gripslicked rope, the hat a Knox. She bought it for him, she remembers: his birthday, three years ago.Reservations

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From the Archive: Cassidy McFadzean (CAROUSEL 32)

CASSIDY MCFADZEAN The Living Skies Struck Us Dead Most of this is coffee and metaphors,and mornings waking up in the dark.When lightning hit the gable,it shook our bed, made the radioshort out, left our fingers tingling,and when I asked you to touch my skinI almost thought I’d see sparks,almost thought we’d both be singed. But others felt it too, the dark cloudabove our houses. We were not alonein thinking light had left its tracesof ozone

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From the Archive: ‘Improvisation is Important’ Jason Interview (CAROUSEL 30)

With a career spanning nearly two decades, Norwegian cartoonist Jason is undoubtedly one of world’s finest storytellers. Known for his sparse drawing style and anthropomorphic characters, he is the creator of a series of acclaimed, award-winning graphic novels that always deliver the perfect blend of humour and heartache. Interview conducted May, 2012 Jason, can you give us an idea how you create a new work? I’m interested in how you break down the tasks, how

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From the Archive: Paul Carlucci (CAROUSEL 30)

PAUL CARLUCCI A Lament for the Tetrapod I see him through the windshield as I turn down our street. He’s standing on the lawn dressed in shorts and his Harry Potter shirt, staring at the grass, hands in his pockets. The rain is drumming off the car like fistfuls of baby hamsters, and the wipers swish back and forth, making my son look like a character from a flipbook. He waves when I pull into

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From the Archive: Louisa Howerow (CAROUSEL 29)

LOUISA HOWEROW Jigsaw Puzzle The kitchen smells of cabbage and quiet.On the table a jigsaw puzzle,the Basilica di San Marcowhose four hundred pieces my mother sortsinto straight edges, corners, colours,greys, blues, blue-greens. I tell her I’ve seen the holy relics,bones of saints, a vial with the blood of Christ “I should have saved mine,” she saysreferring to her left kidney, the cancerous oneshe’s convinced is living healthyin somebody else’s body. I imagine her bringing the

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