from A Night-Blue Stumble Of Gaslight
The adventures of L. M. Fish stretch across nearly a half-century of American history in a sequence that Tom Sleigh has praised as “an uncommonly intelligent, passionate, and tactile event.” By M. Reed Corey
Beacons of Ancestorship
Tortoise beat-maker, producer and multi-instrumentalist John McEntire talks to At Length about the band’s eclectic new record and his work recording the forthcoming Broken Social Scene album.
Hydrology of California
Brenda Hillman‘s tour of California’s rivers invokes the future of poetry; addresses the likes of Wallace Stevens, Joni Mitchell and “crazy brenda”; and leads to a prayer that borrows from present joys.
Salvage
A memoir of childhood summers spent in small-town Missouri, in a grandfather’s mysterious salvage yard — and of the surprising ways memory itself is an ongoing reclamation project. By Andrew Wingfield.
Dying Makes You Stronger
Magoo and Audrey work together at the Hawaii Center for Tourism and Culture. When Magoo sets himself on fire, his death is just his first big surprise. By Lance Uyeda.
Sorting &Wonder of Birds
Two linked poems from Joanna Klink rummage through a failed relationship, struggling with the challenge of compassion, the violence of the outside world, and the wish to anchor both in something true.
Media Vuelta
A Mexican musician travels to America to look for the wife he lost years ago. From Michael Jayme-Becerra, author of the short story collection Every Night Is Ladies’ Night.
Small Mercies
When Peter’s wife killed herself, he could only be grateful that she’d spared his son. A novella from Tim Winton, the Booker Prize–nominated author of Dirt Music.
Stray
The best-paid court reporter in Boise, Idaho, moves to San Francisco and brings home an unexpected stray—a toddler. By Melissa Yancy.
An Immigrant Woman
An engine of New York City’s growth becomes a terrifying example of its failures in Anne Winters’s intricate and harrowing account.
The Begotten
James McMichael builds to an uncanny version of the Irish potato famine, invoking the forces of appetite, increase, and distant authority.
Tantalus in Love
Alan Shapiro weaves Greek myth into a dramatic rendering of a marriage’s last moments and its tendency to reanimate itself every time it seems beyond hope.
Being Serious
Christian Wiman tells the life story of a man named Serious with unerring wit and mounting poignancy.
The Return of the Portrait Studio
Portraits from Caroll Taveras‘s Photo Studio project, which operated in Brooklyn in February.
Plus: Natalie Matustchovsky’s interview with the photographer.
Futurity
César Alvarez of Brooklyn band The Lisps provides a preview of their new steampunk indie-rock musical, Futurity, and chats with us about the joys and pains of creating in the space between two genres.