* Eric McDowell *
Should we be surprised if a film called The Past spends a lot of time and narrative energy circling around backstory? No. But that doesn’t mean we have to excuse the film for undermining our desire to invest in its characters and their actions.
A Separation from “The Past” Read More »
* A.L. Major *
The weather in Michigan this winter is stubbornly cold. March has arrived, but spring seems distant. Used to be on days of obstinate gray, I would curl up on my sofa and read a great novel, but lately I can only read a few pages before the author’s beautiful prose charges my insecurities about my own writing. Instead of relaxing I’m analyzing every sentence, thinking again of that scene I need to fix, and then I’m worrying that I’ll never finish and I will be a failure. So instead after I’ve finished writing for the day, I wrap myself in a fleece blanket, and I watch a movie, often a romantic comedy.
* Nicholas Johnson *
How does an artist make something now that compels us to look longer than our modernised attention spans are accustomed to looking? The piling up, ease of access to, and relentless mutation of cultural information occasioned by the internet has so drastically altered the way we look and process images that it’s nearing impossible to remember a time when it was any different. Two artists: Camille Henrot and Helen Marten, present two new methods of dealing with this increasingly dense accrual of objects and information.
Emergent Modes of Seeing and Display: Helen Marten & Camille Henrot Read More »
* Paula Mendoza *
I have been thinking a lot about poetry lately, but not in any good or nourishing way. AWP, by the time you read this post, will have just happened, although it’s happening right now.
Writing Through It Read More »
* Gina Balibrera *
Soft rosy water puddled up in the light, and in the sand, seabird wings lay half-buried and a hermit crab died without dignity. I was still ashamed for silencing the children’s joy. My friend observed that the scrubby tops of the hills, their gentle descent into the sea, looked like the crumbs on top of a coffeecake.
* Kaveh Bassiri *
There are two main models of extending love beyond the narrow confines of marriage and family. One is the mystical and the other communal. And the movie Her touches on both of these options.
Going Beyond the Bourgeois Love Read More »
* Zhanna Slor *
A weekday is like a nearly full water glass. Most of it gets filled with whatever happens when you arrive at your desk, and collapse into that cheap plastic rolling chair that’s never comfortable no matter how you sit in it. Whatever’s left takes up that tiny bit of space—that always seems to fly by in an instant—between getting home and crashing into bed. It is vital, at least for me, to take advantage of those little nooks and crannies of time—that ten minutes when you happen to arrive to work early. The forty-five minutes left after making and eating lunch. That fifteen minutes before sleep, while you lay in bed awake, your body not quite ready to drift off yet.
The Importance of Punctuation Read More »
* Claire Skinner *
Driving from Las Vegas at night, the first glimpse is from Spirit Mountain, almost five thousand feet above Laughlin. Darkness below, darkness above, and at the very center: a line of light—red, white, turquoise, yellow, pink. Casinos. The blaze of them all the more startling because for an hour we’ve been driving through nothingness. Or what appears to be nothingness: the dark desert mountains and the dark desert valleys with the occasional blip of civilization (signs for Girls! Girls! Girls! Steak & Eggs only 5.99! Endless Slots!), then–blink, blink–gone.
One Day and One Night in Laughlin, Nevada Read More »
* Mary Camille Beckman *
The poetry I love most, I love the way I did my girlhood best friend. And for the same reasons: disobedient wit, cool smarts, a throaty voice, candor. I love it for its intensity, for its invitation to intimacy.
Song in My Heart: On Poetry and BFFs Read More »
