In our modern era, a lot of people wonder what the purpose of literature is, perhaps even questioning the relevance of art in general. In a world with so many social problems and so many other ways to stay distracted, why devote time to a poem by Wallace Stevens or a novel by Virginia Woolf? But I think literature is actually the opposite of a distraction, it forces us to confront deeply the social, political, economic, ecological, and moral issues that ensnare our daily lives.

If you ever want to get into a bar fight, a good instigating question may be, are song lyrics poetry? It seems like most everyone has an opinion on this and very few of those opinions are dispassionate. For some, Bob Dylan and Nas are a modern-day Wordsworth and Shelley. For others, poetry and songwriting are two distinct art forms measured by different standards. There is absolutely no way your humble reviewer will ever answer this question or resolve this controversy in a book review. But I often found myself contemplating these topics while reading Carrie Magness Radna’s new book Shooting Myself in the Dark.

Researching family history can be an addictive enterprise. I recently found this out when I discovered the website findagrave.com. I learned shocking pieces of information about my ancestors that filled me with all the suspense of a great paperback mystery. If you decide to visit this website, please be warned, it may consume days and maybe even weeks of your life. But this leads to an interesting question, how is it that in a society so obsessed with current fads and future possibilities, we can still be so engrossed by origin stories? This is one of the questions that Bruce E. Whitacre explores in his new book, The Elk in the Glade.

An editorial in the New York Times recently claimed that poetry is dead. Among the writer’s spurious arguments was the claim that poetry must be about nature and since our civilization is so far removed from nature, poetic experience is no longer possible. I think this claim tells us more about the writer than it does about poetry; that he has a rather narrow view of what constitutes nature and that he hasn’t read very much contemporary poetry. For if he had, perhaps Design by Theresa Burns, a poetic celebration of the natural world, would have found its way to his bookshelf.