short story collections

Book Reviews 2021

reviews

At New Pop Lit we love all things book related and we try to write the occasional review. Today we’ve posted at our oft-neglected Book Chat/Book Review blog a review of a powerful new collection of stories by Emma Duffy-Comparone, Love Like That. Any short story writer particularly will want to get this book– to see what’s being done by fellow writers. What’s accomplished and what can be accomplished with the form. No doubt that with a few of these stories, Duffy-Comparone sets the bar high.

Something for others to shoot for.

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(Be sure as well to read another book review we posted this year, this one— of a book about Sylvia Plath– parked at our Opinion page.)

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ALSO pay a quick visit to our POP SHOP! Purchase our latest. Talk about state of the art!

Thanks.

Unclassifiable Poetry

Poetry

BEWARE THE NICHE PEOPLE!

roger-de-la-fresnaye-the architect

WE’VE NOTICED that some literary people like to put other writers into a niche. Such as, “Exactly what kind of poet are you? Are you a flarf poet or an Instapoet or a beat poet, or a trad, or a lake poet, or Elizabethan or Edwardian, or maybe Victorian, modernist or hip-hop, or really, what kind of poet after all do you claim to be what box can we put you in how do we classify you, where can we put you to shorthand you, dismiss you, or otherwise find some way to short circuit our brains so we don’t have to THINK?”

(It’s a variation on labeling everyone according to party or politics: Wear the proper name tag and don’t ever switch sides or change beliefs.)

Which is a roundabout way of saying we have more poetry today, “‘That’ll do, Pig’ and Two Other Poems” by James D. Casey IV, who claims to write every kind of poem, and based on the evidence he’s provided, we believe him. Three poems. Hope you like them.

I’ve dreamt of hunting
vampires with Bukowski
and getting in barfights
with Hemingway and dodging
bats with Thompson and being
lost in the desert with Jim

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ON OTHER FRONTS, we have a book review of a short (four stories) short story collection by talented story writer Elizabeth Sims— and:

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THE 3-D STORY

the bargeman fernand leger

WE CONTINUE to ask questions at our NPL News blog about whether or not the short story form needs to change– we strongly believe it does– as we lay the groundwork for the coming release of our solution: the Three-Dimensional Story. A lot going on.
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(Art: “”Simultaneous Windows” by Robert Delaunay; “The Architect” by Roger de la Fresnaye; “The Bargeman” by Fernand Leger.)

 

New Pop Lit Goes International

book review, Pop Lit Fiction

WE EXPECT New Pop Lit to eventually be a worldwide phenomenon, so we’re not averse to spotlighting writers from around the world. We’ve published or presented writers from UK, Germany, Poland, Canada, Malta, Italy, Belarus, Spain, Israel, Switzerland– and we’ve had readers on every continent, with the possible exception of Antarctica.

Today we present new fiction, “The Major,”  by renowned Russian author Vladimir Kozlov, translated by Andrea Gregovich. Worth reading for its realism but also to see what’s happening in other literary scenes.

“Well, I have evidence not only that you’ve seen it before, but that you were directly involved in its creation. Do you know what this is called?

“A comic book, I guess.”

“It’s called ‘spreading deliberately false fabrications to defame the Soviet state and social order.’ Article seventy-two of the Criminal Code for the BSSR. I can also pull up Article 58-10: ‘Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.’”
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BUT, at the same time we also present a New Pop Lit review of Mr. Kozlov’s entire new short story collection, 1987 and Other Stories, of which “The Major” is part.

ONLY at New Pop Lit. Always at the literary forefront.
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(Painting: “Blue Crest” by Wassily Kandinsky.)