Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

A writer takes a minute for a closer look

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Category: reviews

  • Marge Piercy’s poetic heart still keeping good time

    Of course I would read The Hour of My Death, the newest and possibly final work by Marge Piercy. Her 1980 collection of poetry The Moon Is Always Female is the single thing my first lover gave me that I kept after that relationship went down in flames. I still have it. The yearlong journal…

  • Julia Park Tracey’s ‘Silence’ spoke to me

    A horse named Raven pulled me deep into this story, a historical tale set in Puritan-era New England where a woman named Silence is punished for expressing outsized emotions and must endure a year of not speaking. Of course I would gravitate to author Julia Park Tracey’s book. A while ago, I took up that…

  • Strap in, honey: Rick Levin’s “Off Route”

    About halfway through author Rick Levin’s novel “Off Route,” I found myself muttering, “Pick a lane, dude.” But not in a bad way. More in a “what the hell kind of story is this?” way. There’s no knowing what’s coming around the next narrative bend. But Levin’s voice is so real, so comfortable in its…