Books
Bernadette Mayer Evokes the Banality and Urgency of the Quotidian
In Memory, the poet shapes a new visual and textual language that explores the simmering possibilities of consciousness.
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Alice Trumbull Mason, a Pioneer of Abstraction, Makes a Triumphant Return
Emily Mason remembers her mother saying, “I’ll be famous when I’m dead.” Though fame may not be quite secured (yet), the artist’s first-ever monograph acts as bulwark against forgetting her legacy.
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On the Figurative Road
Alice Notley's book-length poem charts the journey during which we assess the value of words and their historical contexts.
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Van Gogh and the Books He Loved
To Vincent, books were calls to action, lessons in life.
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A Writer’s Portrait of Louise Bourgeois
Now, Now Louison is a book that will trouble purists who believe in strict categories, such as biography, art criticism, and novel.
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A Minimalism of Ideas, Rather Than Things
In The Longing for Less author Kyle Chayka searches for a minimalist mindset that isn’t “obsessing over possessions or the lack thereof but challenging our day-to-day experience of being in the world.”
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The Fertilizing Power of Funk
Fred Moten’s innovative poems investigate the fugitive philosophy of Black sound.
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Breaking Down the Limits of Identity Through Poetry
Sally Wen Mao recognizes that there is no commonly shared Asian American experience, except racism of one form or another.
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A Queer, South Asian Utopia Comes to Life in This Graphic Novel
Bishakh Som’s Apsara Engine imagines what happens when femmes, as Donna Haraway writes, “make kin, not babies.”
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Malcolm McLaren’s Life of Chaos, Music, and Art
In a new, in-depth biography, Paul Gorman offers a vivid portrait of the postmodernist impresario who conjured up punk’s angry pose, the Sex Pistols, and much more.
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Wanda Coleman, the Great Poet of Los Angeles
Coleman not only embraces her multitudes, but changes effortlessly from one persona and voice to another — things she needed to do in order to survive as a single Black mother raising two children in Los Angeles.
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Gabriel Orozco’s Journals Invite Readers to Retrace His Steps
What makes Written Matter different from some artists’ journals is that one need not be familiar with Orozco — or even the legacy of Conceptualism to which his work is tethered — to enjoy it.