Into the Writer’s Labyrinth: Storytelling Days with Gabo

Today we visit the Archives to read this tesoro: writing lessons from Gabriel García Márquez, as remembered by Elias Miguel Muñoz in Michigan Quarterly Review, Winter, 1995. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ To Don Rob: “There is nothing more dangerous than a written memory.” Gabriel García Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth Five years later, as I face my Sundance […]

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Future Theory

“Future Theory,” by Andrew Hemmert, appears in the Winter 2019 Issue of MQR. Now let’s all take a deep breath and start over. Hello, my name is mostly water. My name is I have never known a world other than this one. You too? Maybe you are also dismayed by our inability to quickly travel into

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The Structure of Pluto

Paisley Rekdal’s poem, “The Structure of Pluto,” appeared in  MQR’s Spring 2002 issue. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Whose only moon is Charon, ferryman of the dead who circles death’s king. No cartoon dog this, Pluto brings its own rules to the table: sheets of rock and frozen methane, an icy mantle of ammonia that cloaks in a perfume

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Preservation and Perseverance: A Review of Emily Jungmin Yoon’s A Cruelty Special to Our Species

A Cruelty Special to Our Species by Emily Jungmin Yoon is a tender and sharp collection that navigates the history of “comfort women” used by the Japanese Empire during World War II. By bringing these events to the forefront of our minds and conversations, these powerful poems insist on the importance of the past. Yoon

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Knowing Silence Moves us to Speak: Review of Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic

“In these avenues, deafness is our only barricade,” reads the final line of “Checkpoints,” a poem in Ilya Kaminsky’s forthcoming book Deaf Republic (Graywolf, 2019). In a lyric world uniquely his own, deafness and its sister sound, silence, become the central tropes of Kaminsky’s book-length sequence of poems about war, resistance, death, and love. His

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Negative Capability

“Negative Capability,” by Yusef Komunyakaa,  appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review’s Summer 1999 issue. We bring you this poem from The MQR Archives. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ The honeysuckle vines are certain They’ll be here tomorrow morning, Unhushed scent reaching into next month, As I rest the scythe against a stump To sharpen the curved blade. Their green surety. My

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Worshippers

“Worshippers,” by Caitlin Kindervatter-Clark, appears in the Winter 2019 Issue of MQR. After half a lifetime of unsuccessfully trying to control my drinking, I decided to surrender the whole endeavor and quit. In the wake of this decision, my ego underwent a partial collapse. Drinking had been a major part of how I defined myself; it

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Chapman’s Heart

“Chapman’s Heart,” by Michael Byers, appears in the Winter 2019 Issue of MQR. It was a new program, long-argued over, newly implemented. Before a president, any president, could launch the weapons that would kill a billion humans, he, or she, would have to murder Chapman and extract the mesh from his aorta. To kill billions impersonally,

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Talking in Our Pajamas: A Conversation with Sandra Cisneros on Finding Your Voice, Fear of Highways, Tacos, Travel, and the Need for Peace in the World

In honor of Sandra Cisneros winning the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature this week, we invite you to a pajama party with Sandra Cisneros and Ruth Behar. From the Archives. Ruth Behar’s interview with Sandra Cisneros appeared in MQR’s Summer 2008 issue. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ I was back in Ann Arbor after a stay of several

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