Greg Walklin -

Review of “The Book of Eve”

April 28th, 2023

My review of the “The Book of Eve” by Carmen Boullosa is up over at Literal Magazine. From the review:

The Book of Eve, a work of fiction by Carmen Boullosa, is cognizant of the cultural encoding in the Book of Genesis, and particularly the way it has served the interests of men. We can’t be sure who exactly wrote the creation stories in the Bible, for example, but we can be fairly sure that it wasn’t a woman. This novel thus aims at reversing the binary: at upending all of the encoded norms and themes that go along with it. Especially the patriarchal ones.
Review of “Arrthymias”

January 22nd, 2023

My review of “Arrthymias” by Angelina Muñiz-Huberman (translated by D. P. Snyder) has now appeared over at Literal Magazine. A bit from the review:

The pleasure in reading this book comes from both its “salt and pepper” variations—the many topics, styles, approaches, and ideas covered here, with the twists that Muñiz-Huberman provides—and the singular, consistent way it chops them up into digestible, short repast.
On Leaves of Grass

January 11th, 2023

Another test post—I’m using Ulysses, now, to see how it would publish a blog post directly from the iPad. Did this work?

Walt Whitman

At 41, or so.

This test post features a photo of Walt Whitman, when he was just a few years older than I am now. Starting out 2023, I finally read the 1855 version of “Leaves of Grass,” which has been long on my to-read pile, after coming across some commentary on it in Jesse Ball’s “Autoportrait”—Ball talked about how the 1855 version of “Leaves” was one of the books he’s obsessed with. It seemed as good a time as any to pluck the old red, white and blue Barnes & Noble classic edition from my bedroom shelf.

I’d read a lot of Whitman here and there, but “Leaves” was really astonishing in many ways—not just for its frankness, but its incredible range of empathy, vision, and poetic thought. I kept pulling out quotes and saving them to my notes. Stuff so good you’d want it to be read at your funeral. How on earth did Whitman get away with writing this stuff at the time?
Test Post

July 23rd, 2022
Hello. This is just a test post to see how everything works. Getting back into this thing. Trying out a few things.

How about an image of a Cooper’s hawk?
I call him Coop. It was during a creative drought.
So far so good. Let’s try some other things:

“Consider, Sir, how should you like, though conscious of your innocence, to be tried before a jury for a capital crime, once a week.”
– Samuel Johnson
Site 2.0

February 1st, 2022

New Site

If by some chance you’ve stumbled upon this site, I’m in process of reworking it and getting some of the old content and links to my work back live.

Review of “The Book of Eve”

Review of “Arrthymias”

On Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman

Test Post

Site 2.0