Matrix 81: The Independents is now available with reviews of:

The Cult of Quick Repair by Dede Crane
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy by Tao Lin
O Cadoiro by Erin Moure
The Jealousy Bone by Julie Paul
Living Things by Matt Rader
8×8x7 by Colin Smith
Woodshedding by S.E. Venart
Families are Formed Through Copulation by Jacob Wren

Nightwood Editions, 2008

read by Darren Bifford

Living Things is Matt Rader’s second book of poetry. The good poems in this book are very good—with the lesser poems standing as just good. They are technically accomplished and gritty, displaying something of a debt to Babstock and early Lowell. More than this, Rader’s book is the result of a great deal of intense reading in mid-20th century English and American poetry. I suppose this kind of background should be assumed with any contemporary poetry; with Rader, however, the indebtedness of influence and effort to write poems that can compete with the best is especially evident and painfully admirable. (more…)

Coteau Books, 2008

Read by Drew Halfnight

There is something womblike about the stories in Dede Crane’s new collection The Cult of Quick Repair. The warm prose washes over the reader like a benign amniotic fluid, and one has the sense, especially in the opening story “Seers,” which evokes the deep heat and soothing gyrations of an ultrasound, that one could perhaps float effortlessly through life with no trouble at all. But for Crane, the ultrasound reveals babies and tumours alike. Visceral ruptures, including abortions, adultery and death, await the characters in this collection. The dowdy nurse who so lovingly applies the cool, bluish goo, for example, becomes the victim of spontaneous perversions. (more…)