While pregnant, the poet and novelist JoAnna Novak embarked on a grant-supported three weeks in Taos, N.M., to write a book about the monastic painter Agnes Martin. The result, “Contradiction Days,” ...

All this stuff lands with a deft and winking humor. Boehlke's Robert becomes increasingly dotty while Everson's John bears it all with good grace. The mean undercurrent of age and youth emerges ...