Life as Sisyphean Sport in Anelise Chen’s So Many Olympic Exertions
So Many Olympic Exertions shows the limits of living life like a game.
Blog
Imagining the Anthropocene: The Corporeal Poetics of Marianne Boruch’s Cadaver, Speak
In her book Cadaver, Speak, Boruch engages in a corporeal self-study through figure drawing, art history, and medical anatomy. From inside her own “bonehouse,” Boruch builds a poetics of embodiment, suturing her firsthand observation to the cultural paradigms that have marked our language.
Stories Strangely Told: Stories That Break Their Molds
There are stories that break from patterns, and stories that pull so hard at their stitching that they unravel themselves in the process.
The Effluvia of Short Fiction
By utilizing various forms of “effluvia” in their work, Amelia Gray, Alexandra Kleeman, and Helen Oyeyemi give us greater insight into the human condition. They show us why shit matters.
The Reckless Romanticism of Mary Wollstonecraft
The collected letters Mary Wollstonecraft wrote to Gilbert Imlay from 1791 to 1795 are not as widely read as her political and travel writings. Still, they offer precious glimpses of a lively, intellectual eighteenth-century woman in the midst of heartbreak, pregnancy, motherhood, and a blooming writing career.
Trump Appoints Former Lit Mag Editor to Top Post
President Trump appointed Jon Parrish Peede as the acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Peede’s appointment comes at a time of heightened tension between the arts community and the Trump administration.
Black Voices on the Civil War
Charlottesville has me thinking about poems of the Civil War that center black experiences. Poems from the Civil War canon are usually heavy on Whitman, Dickinson, or folk songs. The following three texts should satisfy anyone who wants to read beyond “O Captain, My Captain.”
Louise Erdrich’s Literary Children
Louise Erdrich’s most recent triptych of novels—The Plague of Doves (2008), The Round House (2012), and LaRose (2016)—all feature children more prominently than adults. Children are confronted with a many-layered moral question that their experiences over the course of the novel will help them to process.
The Limits and Freedoms of Literary Regionalism: The Power of Repeated Setting and Statement in August Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle”
For August Wilson, his hometown of Pittsburgh was the setting for nine of his ten plays; his complete oeuvre thus earning the moniker “The Pittsburgh Cycle.” Each play is set in a different decade, allowing Wilson to examine the black experience across different times, but in the same place.