Kristofer Collins

A novel named after a Midwestern city subjects itself to the place-based purity tests of the born and raised. For the non-native dwellers—the vacationers; the passers-through; the students and appropriators; the unaware but opinionated— it can be a treasure hunt for personal connections. The title of Natasha Stagg’s novel Grand Rapids is certainly the reason I picked up the book.

Sony Ton-Aime’s Konbit is a book of anniversaries: birthdays, deaths, the day(s?) before, the day after. Centered in the orbit of days recurring and days past, the Bois Caïman ceremony: August 14, 1791, the start of the Haitian Revolution, a voodoo ceremony held in the northern city of Bois Caïman, during which revolutionaries first established plans for independence.

The first time I heard of the poet Larry Levis was undoubtedly in some dark corner of one of any number of the neighborhood bars that, much like an old Family Circus comic strip, the crew of writers I hung out with back then, stitched together a sloshy dotted line that formed a heroic embroidery of bad decisions and hilarious misunderstandings which inevitably led to the ultimate triumvirate of more booze, plenty of punchlines, and, if we were very, very lucky, a modest epiphany or two.