Poetry

A sketch of Thomas Jefferson.
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Notes on the State of Virginia: Journey to the Center of an American Document, Queries IV and V

ByKiki Petrosino

This is the third installment of a year-long journey through Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. **Query IV: A notice of its mountainsQuery V: Its cascades and caverns I walked into Queries IV and V thinking Jefferson would use these sections to acknowledge the changeability of Virginia’s natural landscape, the dramatic variations of…

Join or Die Benjamin Franklin
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NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA: Journey to the Center of an American Document, Queries II and III

ByKiki Petrosino

This is the second installment of a year-long journey through Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. Here’s the first installment. ** Query II: A notice of its rivers, rivulets, and how far they are navigable Query III: A notice of the best Seaports of the State, and how big are the vessels they…

Pictures of a couple of rows of books on a shelf.
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The Best Poem I Read This Month: Sade Murphy’s “Entry 098 &/or Monday Night Before Thanksgiving or//Venus & Mars in Libra”

ByJohn Rufo

Sade Murphy pauses time in her prose piece(s) “Entry 098 &/or Monday Night Before Thanksgiving or//Venus & Mars in Libra” in DREGINALD. A series of moments—walking down Grand Street, pivoting on Putnam, taking the bus to Greenpoint—become infused with back-and-forth switches of vision, allowing Murphy to double her text. This doubling is literal: two prose blocks appear…

Canyon in the Body by Lan Lan and I Can Almost See the Clouds of Dust by Yu Xiang
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Canyon in the Body by Lan Lan and I Can Almost See the Clouds of Dust by Yu Xiang

ByKoh Xin Tian

In Canyon in the Body by Lan Lan (b. 1967), translated from Chinese by poet and musician Fiona Sze-Lorrain, the speaker bears witness to reminders of the natural world in the midst of personal and mass misfortune. Sometimes indignant, at other times resigned or awestruck, the speaker’s observations add up to more than their parts….

Review: THE DARKENING TRAPEZE by Larry Levis
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Review: THE DARKENING TRAPEZE by Larry Levis

ByElizabeth O'Brien

The Darkening Trapeze Larry Levis Graywolf Press, January 2016 96 pp; $16 Buy paperback The Darkening Trapeze, Larry Levis’ second posthumous book of poems since his death in 1996, is a strikingly self-conscious collection, a book whose lyrical depth and sweeping beauty is checked by gossip, unflattering confessions, jokes, and self-deprecation at every turn. The…

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The Best Poem I Read This Month: Mia You’s “A Solar Visor And A Song To Sing, Preliminary materials for reunification”

ByJohn Rufo

As a result of several wars fought by the United States, North and South Korea have been divided since the mid-20th century. A further division was implemented through the creation of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, which, in an epigraph to Mia You’s piece, is noted as a contemporary “viable tourism resource.” Mia You, in “A…

Review: TESTAMENT by G.C. Waldrep
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Review: TESTAMENT by G.C. Waldrep

ByPaul Scott Stanfield

Testament G.C. Waldrep BOA Editions, 2015 144 pp, $16 Buy: paperback | Kindle | Nook An endnote to G. C. Waldrep’s excellent new book-length poem points out that it “originated as a exploration of and response to three texts,” Lisa Robertson’s Magenta Soul Whip (2009), Carla Harryman’s Adorno’s Noise (2008), and Alice Notley’s Alma, or…