Should I Write A Sonnet?

Narcopolis Jeet Thayil Penguin Press, April 2012 304 pages $25.95 It’s dangerous to look for the reincarnation of a classic novel in contemporary literature.  Like a monk seeking the next in the line of a particular lama, I placed the various relics of Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano before first time novelist Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis,…

It’s time for our weekly free Ploughshares contest! This week, we’re featuring our Spring 1997 issue, guest-edited by Yusef Komunyakaa and featuring work by Mark Doty, Marilyn Hacker, and Martin Espada. Interestingly, it also features a story by Carolyn Ferrell, whose short story collection Don’t Erase Me was accidentally placed in the children’s section of…

Dear Lucy Julie Sarkissian Simon & Schuster, April 2013 340 pages $25.00 Genre: literary fiction, debut. Concerning: Lucy, a young woman whose different way of seeing and behaving has compelled her image-conscious, frustrated mother, Mum mum, to abandon her on a farm. And: Samantha, a pregnant teenager on the same farm. And: Missus and Mister,…