It’s true that he wanted to be inside and outside the art world at the same time, but he was on public performance whenever he was out.
On The Grandfather of Pop Art: An Interview with Diane Kirkpatrick Read More »
At times, Nguyen allows us to see beyond the brother into the world of ghosts conceived by exile—just as ghosts exist between the world of the living and the dead, the placeless exist between spaces of belonging and may require the same effort of remembering.
Dangerously Close to Living: A Review of Ghost Of by Diana Khoi Nguyen Read More »
I wanted some people that I didn’t personally know either and just thought, well, each one of these people has a mother who may or may not still be with us, who may be forced to still live in the area where they lost their child, someplace that they walk past every day. And they’re out of our hands.
“Can Poetry Hurt Us?”: An Interview with Patricia Smith Read More »
Jaguar Song —Just after you sign and envision building homes on this tract you smell me in the dark know that I move through this terrain at night though you only think of building and selling even now you believe you can borrow my spirit by wearing a mask of my face
Reading her book was akin to stumbling upon a coworker’s diary (or, more realistically, an outspoken social media profile), an exercise I found simultaneously fascinating and mildly discomfiting.
Proud to be Un-American Read More »
This was the first of several instances like this, where joyful moments were interrupted with outages that seemed to mock you for your leisure, forcing you to stop whatever you were doing until some basic modicum of service had been restored.
I read through the drafts. All of them because I don’t want to make easily dismissible arguments against the Empire. The stakes are too high.
Petty Materialism: On Metaphor & Violence Read More »
An Inventory of Losses captures the imagination in individual time capsules that prompt us to reflect on our own losses.
An Inventory of Losses, by Judith Schalansky (New Directions) trans. Jackie Smith Read More »
Music for the Dead and Resurrected is a timely antidote to popular over-identifications with nationally sanctioned narratives, the kind that disappears the nuanced stories that help shape an individual’s sense of home and purpose.
My writing can’t get away from the space in which it’s possible to commune with the dead, to have a second chance reckoning with those who are gone. I believe in hauntings, but I’m not entirely sure I believe in an afterlife. My writing likes to keep that door open all the time.
The Privacy of Magic: An Interview with Tea Obreht Read More »
