The Cabinet of Ordinary Affairs: Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer and Cheryl Wassenaar
Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer and Cheryl Wassenaar take us into The Cabinet of Ordinary Affairs, an art exhibit inspired by a poetry manuscript by Schlaifer, in which they explore the bureaucracy of the mind through imagined interior government officials and cabinets.
The Music Does Not Matter: Notes on Music in Literature
“Nevertheless, all across Boston, music remains awake, remains traveling from performance hall to telephone wire to private music room or bedroom, whether it can be heard or not . . ..” Jaydn Dewald roves through literature, looking at the challenges–and pleasures–of representing music in words.
Ode to Mark Frechette
“He’s twenty— / a talent / scout / famously said— // and he hates.” In swift currents, a new poem from Randall Mann records the brief, bright promise of a radical life.
A Field Guide to the Natural Disasters of Southern California
“There were faults we couldn’t see, and we built a home there.” A two-track poem from Charles Jensen sets a story of sex, love, despair, and eventual, imagined restoration alongside an account of the ways in which the earth, air, and water of California, afflicted by humans, periodically afflict humans in turn.
The Poem That Won’t Leave You Alone, Volume 2
Featuring Chad Parmenter on Shakespeare; Jay Deshpande on Lucie Brock-Broido; Ricky Varghese on Akhil Katyal; Deanna Dikeman on Longfellow; Craig Santos Perez on Gina Myers; Chad Davidson on Craig Raine; Steve Castro on Vallejo; and Jonathan Farmer on Yeats.
Old Times There
“He’s dreaming, and // I see his dream.” In Shane McCrae‘s new verse drama, Jim Limber looks down on Jefferson Davis from heaven–and Davis grasps at him from hell.
Keep Fast Hold of Your Parents
I laid my victim cards before Mary Jane, one by one, like I had a Tarot pack: “See this!” and ”See this!” and “See that!” Just as I got to the part about my mother, some egregious slight of hers I thought worthy of justifiable anger, Mary Jane stopped me. Mid-sentence. “Your job,” she said, “is to leave other people alone.” An excerpt from poet Spencer Reece ‘s memoir, The Little Entrance: Devotions.
Muscularity and Eros: On Syntax
“Possibly the most disturbing thing about prosody–but about syntax especially, because it involves choice–is its utter fidelity to our innermost–truer?–selves. We sing–and we are betrayed.”Carl Phillips maps the work of syntax through examples from Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Hayden, Tommy Pico, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Sharon Olds, Ed Skoog, Linda Gregg, and francine j. harris.
If They Come For Us: Fatimah Asghar and Shyama Golden
Fatimah Asghar and Shyama Golden discuss how Shyama created cover art for Fatimah’s debut collection of poetry, If They Come For Us, and more. Including glimpses of Shyama’s drafting process and three other pieces of art.
Exit Music (For My Sweetheart The Cheater)
“I elbow crawled / through car bombs and bar brawls just to find you. I’m not your limp // Virginia dick…. I’m the woman / swathed in bloodshot, rising up from unclean seas.” A new poem of fierce vengeance and striking vulnerability from Brandi Nicole Martin.
Robert Calafiore
Robert Calafiore talks with Debra Klomp Ching about his extraordinary and colorful pinhole photographs.
Two Responses to Donald Trump
In “My Greco-Russian Investigation, Reginald Gibbons adapts Pindar’s Third Pythian Ode to hold Donald Trump up to history. And with “The Goddess,” Kathleen Ossip moves from Dante’s Paradiso through her own apotheosis as Mommybody, traveling across the U.S. in search of a sustainable vision of the future.
Two Visual Essays: American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
After Terrance Hayes completed American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, he found he had some remaining fragments and lines that yet “begged … for shape.” From them he has been making drawings.
Persephone, Engaged
“as they shake / the field around them / withers.” With sharp wit and and in terrible detail, Maya Phillips retells the young goddess’ forced descent into a world where “she’d sooner be kin / of fire. // And so she’ll let herself burn / to steal herself back.”
Marnay. May 2017
“One of my friends died yesterday, back home. / My newest grandchild will be born next week. // Three Junes ago, the roses were first blooming. / This May, the roses are nearly ending. // But I woke up with the words in my head / seventy years of beauty.” Shifting between poetry and prose, Ann Fisher Wirth sifts a life among others far from home, in a small town in France.