In The Bloomsbury Review, Ray González reviews *Figures for a Darkroom Voice* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2007): "In a hyper-surreal collaboration, Noah Eli Gordon and Joshua Marie Wilkinson take the prose poem to new, wild heights.... The two poets show how simply seeing is the door to complex experience."
At the Poetry Foundation's Harriet, Stephen Burt reviews Joyelle McSweeney's *Nylund, the Sarcographer* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2007): "Flights of campy-cum-lyrical post-Ashberyan prose.... The Daisy parts are actually sexy, the murder-mystery parts and the furniture-store bits are genuinely funny, the language dissolves into stream-of-consanguinity post-surrealism and then resolves into a plot again.... It’s recommended"
At Coldfront, Mike McDonough reviews *Figures for a Darkroom Voice* by Noah Eli Gordon & Joshua Marie Wilkinson (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2007): "Figures in a Darkroom Voice reads as searching, musical whole. Gordon and Wilkinson produce a voice that turns over new territory without sounding boring, mechanical or self-indulgent. There is somehow a gentle good sense to nearly every strange line they write. You feel like if you read this book carefully enough, you would see that it is actually an instruction manual for living a good life, one that only works if you fall asleep while reading it. You feel like you could invite both of them to dinner, and they wouldn’t embarrass you or your family, except that they would have to wear nametags so you could tell them apart. What could be bad about that?"
At Coldfront, Jason Schneiderman "struggles" to review Danielle Dutton's *Attempts at a Life* (Tarpaulin Sky Press): "I would want to claim these pieces firmly as prose poems—in large part because of the way that poetry has become the big tent where everything that doesn’t fit somewhere else is welcome.... Dutton is certainly at home in a theoretical universe—one could discuss many of these poems—and quite profitably, I think—in terms of contemporary literary theory. However, Dutton’s work is incredibly inviting—she’s able to inhabit the insights of theory and then perform them without having to get bogged down in the sort of jargon or explanation that might deter the general reader (whoever you are). Dutton’s work is “accessible” in the best way possible. She’s working at a remarkably high level of insight while still inviting you to enjoy yourself."
At Prick of the Spindle, Cynthia Reeser interviews Joyelle McSweeney (*Nylund, the Sarcographer*, Tarpaulin Sky Press): "Once you put the sarcography in motion as a matter of writing, then anything can happen, because the sentence can always open up trapdoors and catwalks via its clauses and phrases and puns and jokes and fantasies and so forth. In fact, the one rule I had when writing this was not to use good taste or understatement or comely resonance at all, but just to follow all my stray ideas, at the level of the sentence, to keep it opening, twinning, diverging, dividing. I used more conventional aspects of noir—a dead woman, a missing woman, a young hood, an (elderly) femme fatale—as sort of course correction as the book ran along."
At Bookslut, Christopher Higgs reviews Joyelle McSweeney's *Nylund, the Sarcographer*: "Nylund, the Sarcographer is like interesting on steroids. Caution: if you are looking for a typical, straight forward, good old fashioned yarn, you’d do best to look elsewhere; but if you want to experience something fresh, daring, creepy, and significant, this is the one for you. It is the opposite of boring, an ominous conflagration devouring the bland terrain of conventional realism, the kind of work that tickles your inner ear, gives you the shivers, and tricks your left brain into thinking that your right brain has staged a coup d'état....Other than the incomparable Ben Marcus, I’m not sure anyone in contemporary letters can compete with the voracity of ingenuity, complexity, and beauty of McSweeney’s usage."
At Rain Taxi, Peter Connors reviews Danielle Dutton's *Attempts at a Life* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2007): "In section after section in Attempts at a Life, Danielle Dutton executes expert, miniscule language slips that make us slide down the surface of her narratives like raindrops streaking the windows of the last un-gentrified house in an old Victorian neighborhood.... It most certainly introduces an important new literary voice."
At dogmatika, Kristina Marie Darling reviews Danielle Dutton's *Attempts at a Life* (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2007): "In her debut collection, Attempts at a Life, Danielle Dutton combines floral umbrellas with strange dreams, the English countryside, and Virginia Woolf.... Written in a lyrical style that borders on the poetic, the works in Attempts at a Life question such literary conventions, frequently manipulating reader's expectations while at the same time scrutinizing them.... Attempts at a Life is a compelling, enigmatic read. Ideal for readers of the fiction and the literary essay alike, Danielle Dutton's new book is a significant contribution to contemporary experimental writing. Five stars."
In The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Kate Zambreno reviews Danielle Dutton's *Attempts at a Life*: "The stories often read like curious abstract puzzles, and one should resist running to the bookshelves to attempt to break the code. The best pieces call to mind that of Gertrude Stein or Diane Williams, both obvious influences on Dutton whose lines she also pastiches, with a voice that comes off as refreshingly eccentric, as in the title story, a collection of nine fragmented first-person biographies. She also reimagines the lives of famous heroines from literature, from Hester Prynne to Virginia Woolf’s Mary Carmichael in A Room of One’s Own to Alice James to Madame Bovary. Her glorious version of Jane Eyre reads like one of The Guardian’s congested reads as reimagined by Gertrude Stein or Jane Bowles."