When my mother fell ill during the Flint water crisis, I drove five hundred miles from Saint Louis, my new home. My mother had been among the skeptics when in April 2014 the city switched its water source from Detroit’s system to the Flint River in an alleged effort to save money.
“Blood and Water,” by Kelsey Ronan Read More »
Europe was crawling with adulterous couples. Mostly, for some reason, one saw them at ruins, respectfully tripping over the archeological rubble. Just like regular tourists they seemed to be under some terrible strain, but unlike regular tourists they hardly looked at anything, so that when, say, a lizard streaked across their path, they’d jump and fall into each other with apologetic smiles, more like awkward teenagers than adults risking the forbidden.
“Cauliflower Heads,” by Francine Prose Read More »
Meet the poets, essayists, fiction writers, and translators of MQR 55:2.
Meet Our Contributors, MQR 55:2 Read More »
When you cross the border into our state, whether on the highway or arriving in an airport, the first thing you see is a sign proclaiming that you have entered something called “Pure Michigan.” As an advertising slogan, this has always struck me as bizarre. For one thing, purity is not a high value of mine; there seems something vaguely Nazi-ish about it to my jaundiced Jewish eyes.
Impure Michigan: Introduction to MQR 55:2 Read More »
Our Spring 2016 issue features a special section on the Flint water crisis. Flint native Kelsey Ronan explores the effect of the crisis on her family, and Tarfia Faizullah dedicates her poem “I Told the Water” to Flint; Matthew Baker and Jack Driscoll use fiction to look at life in Michigan today.
Also in this issue: Zhanna Slor remembers her family’s last years in the USSR and Kathy Leonard Czepiel remembers Columbine—again and again.
Fiction from Matthew Baker, Chelsie Bryant, Jack Driscoll, Daniel Herwitz, Janis Hubschman, and Laura Maylene Walter.
Poetry from Anna Lena Phillips Bell, Patricia Clark, Tarfia Faizullah, Jennifer Givhan, Alison Powell, and Alison Stone.
MQR 55:2 | Spring 2016 Read More »
The moon-stirred volume of ocean sighed
Coconut tanning-oil and frozen custard.
Birch horses and dragons rode the merry-go-round.
A splinter of the herringbone cedar boardwalk
Might be teased from your finger with a steel
Needle purged of germs by a match’s flame.
“The Material,” by Robert Pinsky Read More »
Excerpts and curios from around the web:
The enduring art of literary hate mail, Shakespeare as a springboard for spanking, some thoughts on why giving up writing might not be wrong, and Lydia Davis on why we should read translated works. Plus: Vinson Cunningham on what qualities make an essay uniquely American: “As much as one might wish to lay claim to the sensibility of, say, Montaigne—the ruminative philosopher’s ideal, the notion of the essay as neutral attempt—most of us Americans are Emersons: artful sermonizers, pathological point-makers, turntablists spinning the hits with future mischief in mind.”
Literary Hate Mail, Sex with Shakespeare, and more Read More »
Monkeys don’t usually have access to cameras, but it’s an extreme case that reminds us of a larger point: animals create objects, images, gestures, songs, and architecture all the time. Whether we label these activities as art is both a semantic and theoretical choice. One thinker arguing that non-human creativity should be included in our definition of art is curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. She asserts that the field of contemporary art is historically determined and far from universal. People imagine that the way they live–and the broad systems that organize their society–are the best, despite the fact that these things are always changing. History never ends, but we’re constantly fooled into thinking that everything has led up to the current moment with some kind of purpose or finitude.
Lolo the Donkey and the Avant-Garde That Never Was: Part 3 Read More »
Diski’s essays on death hold these things together brilliantly, somehow even beautifully. Her writing, which weaves without warning between a methodical, detailed account of treatment and the daily life of the dying and more ethereal, abstract passages, suggests the experience of losing lucidity and finding it again that a drugged body undergoes. It is to the LRB’s credit that they let Diski, who has been writing regularly for the publication since 1992, do whatever she damn well pleased. And in this way, Diski transcends her clinical status as body-cum-puzzle-piece to be wedged in a machine; she is throughout an active observer and writing subject, who tells us on the other side of chemo that, “the entire process makes me think of clubbing baby seals.”
Jenny Diski is Getting On With It Read More »
I am a man who tilts. When sitting, my head slants to the right; when walking, the upper part of my body reaches forward to catch a sneak preview of the street. One way or another, I seem to be off-center–or “uncentered,” to use the jargon of holism. My lousy posture, a tendency to slump or put myself into lazy contorted misalignments, undoubtedly contributes to lower back pain. For awhile I correct my bad habits, do morning exercises, sit straight, breathe deeply, but always an inner demon that insists on approaching the world askew resists perpendicularity.
“Portrait of My Body,” by Phillip Lopate Read More »
