The Scribbles, the Rubbish, and the Mirrored Words
“Don Mee Choi’s words point us toward a world beyond the American imagination.” —Woogee Bae
All posts filed under: Recent
A selection of recent special features, essays, interviews and reviews
Lips that Kissed Lips
The Elasticity of the Sonnet in Diane Seuss’s frank: sonnets
Interview // “The Quiet Dark”: A Conversation Between Jennifer S. Cheng & Tanya Holtland
“The dark, for me, is always a place of brimming; even when it is anguishing and unbearable. . .”
Life List
A series of poems by BIPOC poets that engage with birds, curated by Sean Hill.
Persimmons
“In English, speakers are actors and objects are acted upon. A persimmon is there to be eaten. For Powhatan speakers, it just as likely might not be there since the persimmon, like other objects of the natural world, has an agency and animacy of its own.”—an essay by Emily Parzybok
Mother Lode
“I wanted people to fall in love with nature through words and want to protect it, the way I had as a child, writing on a concrete stoop in a subdivision. In a way, words were my quarry. I mined their layers for meaning, and when I made something beautiful and useful from them, I felt lighter somehow, as if the overburden of living—the debris of its many griefs—had been lifted.”—an essay by Melissa Reeser Poulin
Unmastering English: On the Work of Cathy Park Hong
“Hong’s essays and poems ask how to write about a country’s murderous onset, when the bloody order continues?”—Paul Hlava Ceballos
Interview // “Mechanics of the Haunt”: A Conversation with Clara Burghelea
“At times, forgetting is essential. In the poem, that refers to the way one person, a mother, a woman, part of a traditional family where roles and expectations are clearly cut, needs to forget about that part of hers in order to breathe, to tend to the little things that make her happy—like doing her nails—to keep it going. We are a multitude of things, after all.”
Interview // Transformation through Story: Heather Cahoon’s Horsefly Dress
Conducted by Jennifer Elise Foerster
Such Hints of Honey
“A poem’s sweetness leads to its own devouring.”—an essay by Jehanne Dubrow