poetry

Pictures of a couple of rows of books on a shelf.
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The Best Poem I Read This Month: “A performance for intimate space with strangers” by Saretta Morgan

  Saretta Morgan participates in “text-based writing,” and currently attends the interdisciplinary graduate writing program at Pratt Institute. Additionally, she’s a member of the Belladonna* Collective, a feminist avant-garde group founded in New York City. These affiliations begin to orient lenses and traditions through which to read her work; but “begin” is the operative word here,…

Preserving Intent: What’s Lost in the Cinematic Translation of Mrs. Dalloway

Preserving Intent: What’s Lost in the Cinematic Translation of Mrs. Dalloway

I like to follow up my reading of a text with its cinematic counterpart. After finishing Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, I rented the DVD of the same name with great anticipation. But after the credits rolled, I was unsatisfied: while the cinematic version of Woolf’s novel provides a touching and well-acted rendering of her vision,…

One light among many unlit bulbs

Reconstruction: How the Lyric Essay Rendered One Body After Trauma

1. I didn’t start writing lyric essays until I found out I had cancer. The melanoma buried in my right cheek was at first missed, and then misdiagnosed in its severity. Clark’s stage IV, they told me. Likely in my lymph nodes, but they wouldn’t know until my third surgery, the excision and biopsy. 2….

Indigenous Taiwanese Lit: From One Island Comes Global History

Indigenous Taiwanese Lit: From One Island Comes Global History

  The deeper you go into reading indigenous literature the greater your understanding of the human condition. Such is the case with Indigenous Writers of Taiwan: An Anthology of Stories, Essays and Poems. In these contemporary and compelling pieces we see beyond skin color, religion, and geographic location by placing Taiwan at the center of…

“Ghosts Usually Accompany Me through My Poems”: An Interview with Diane Seuss
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“Ghosts Usually Accompany Me through My Poems”: An Interview with Diane Seuss

Words just seem to have more possibilities in the poems of Diane Seuss. They become more flexible, more magnetic, attracting and accumulating meaning and music in a speedy rush to surprise, a hard-won clarity about what it’s like to be here, be human. Diane is the author of three books of poetry: Four-Legged Girl (Graywolf…

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

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…