Author: Teri Rife

The poet Alice Notley, whose work is included in the ModPo syllabus, wrote this epic poem. A female hero replaces the typical male heroic figure undertaking a Quest—a feminist epic, published in 1996. The epic is set in a multi-layered underground: a subway system in which everyone is trapped, including Alette, a deeper system of

  Last week, a neighbor pressed into my hands this book which she had checked out at the library. We use different library systems, and mine doesn’t have it. So, this became my Week 9 read. Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker is a historical novel about Elizabeth Keckley who was born a slave, bought her freedom with

How to start talking about this book? Ezra Pound is an American poet included in the ModPo syllabus section regarding Imagism. Pound laid out the principles of Imagism in March 1913. My knowledge of Pound had been limited to this. When I saw a very brief mention of this book and its subject matter I

I had so much fun reading this book, which is a behind-the-scenes look at how lexicographers put together a dictionary. Kory Stamper is a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster, and therefore can tell the reader what it was like to be hired and trained to work on the M-W dictionaries; what the atmosphere on the floor is

Three of Harryette Mullen’s books of poetry, originally published by very small independent presses, have been gathered into this single volume by Greywolf Press and republished in 2006. I rarely read a book of poetry straight through, but these poems, full of word play and as the publisher says “…the language of fashion and femininity,

Yes, another book about art in Spain, more assigned reading for the docent program.  This one is focused on painting, and covers only the time period from 1561 to 1828.  Tomlinson makes a distinction between “painting in Spain” and  “any fixed notion of Spanish painting.”  For instance, she asks, should the Italian artists who decorated

I’ve taken a hard right turn in my reading during the past week, taking up a text assigned as summer reading for the Meadows Museum docent program. This book is a compact (only 231 pages) overview of the history of Spanish painting, sculpture, decorative arts, and architecture, starting with cave painting and ending in the

This book of Science Fiction was originally published in 1969. This edition, with a series introduction by Neil Gaiman, was published by Penguin Books in 2016. The six classic books included in the series are The Once and Future King (1958), Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), Dune (1965), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), The Left

This book, published in 1999, was Winterson’s first collection of stories—seventeen of them—written over the course of her career to-date. I wanted to read these stories because I had very recently read her story, “The 24-Hour Dog,” in an anthology. I’m a dog-lover, so you will probably think that this story is treacly when I