Excerpts and curios from around the web:
Wayne Koestenbaum desecrates with color, Prince pens a memoir, and Fran Lebowitz kindly asks that you cancel your vacation.
The Asterisk-Anus, Don’t Come to NY, and more Read More »
Early in the hour-long film, “The Judicial Murder of Jakub Mohr,” the central protagonist, a patient in a psychiatric ward, shouts in Czech, “My words are not my own!” [“Moje slova nejsou moje!”]. He is on Kafka-esque trial for saying out loud what is visibly true: a series of wires—“Threads!” rebukes the prosecutor—extend from his back and connect to an ominous box, which is held by a man who in turn dictates in whispers what the patient says. At one point, Mohr lists to the jury in indignation what he has become: a gramophone, a radio, an instrument. He is something between human self and machine, a cyborg, his agency mediated by the state and psychiatric institution.
Eva Kot’átková: ERROR Read More »
Sonny Clark is the one who got away. He’s the face you see in still photos but can’t see in motion. A brilliant jazz pianist who was in demand during the 1950s and ’60s on both the West and East coasts, the only known footage of him playing came from a 1956 TV show called Stars of Jazz, but the film seems to have been destroyed when ABC recorded over many of its reels in order to save money.
The Lost Footage of Pianist Sonny Clark Read More »
Meet the poets, essayists, fiction writers, and translators of MQR 55:1.
Meet Our Contributors, MQR 55:1 Read More »
Philip Beidler traces the life of poet Gertrud Kolmar against the rise of Hitler in “This Way to the Führerbunker,” Meghan Forbes examines Lucia Moholy’s place in the life and the legacy of the Bauhaus, Caille Millner explores four gangland murders and the code of honor, Derek Mong muses about nakedness and poetry.
Fiction by Sara Batkie, Ruchama King Feuerman, Ashley Morrow Hermsmeier, and Glori Simmons.
Poetry by Joel Brouwer, Laura McCullough, Shivani Mehta, Caille Millner, Marilyn Nelson, Jóanes Nielsen (translated from Faroese by Matthew Landrum and Tóta Árnadóttir), Diana Reaves, David Roderick, John Rybicki, and Chelsea Wagenaar.
MQR 55:1 | Winter 2016 Read More »
The use of foreign language in this book is worth mentioning—Greenwell includes Bulgarian not just as a cheap device to evoke place (although it does lend the story much realism and authority). The words are deployed with poetic precision: such as in the rhythm of chakai, chakai, chakai (wait, wait, wait); they are used to characterize people, such as Mitko’s love for the word podaruk (gift); and to reflect the narrator’s to make sense of his world (strahoten means awesome, a word “built from a root signifying dread”). Most importantly, it is used to cut deeper into the core of the narrator’s emotional question: priyatel means both friend and lover—which one is he really to Mitko?
A Craft Review of Books: First Picks of 2016 Read More »
Anne Carson writes that prose is a house and poetry is the man on fire running through it. I think we managed to convince ourselves that movies can be that house, when really it’s more of an Airbnb. Checking into an Airbnb for the weekend is not the same as living in a house. While you are physically inside of a home, it is temporary, it is free of obligation aside from the implicit agreement that you will effectively not be the man on fire running through it. But owning a home requires sustained and incremental effort: you need to pay the bills, you need to maintain your property. And with that dedication comes intimacy: it’s your house. It’s the place you return to again and again.
Maybe Novels Are Actually Really Good for Television Read More »
If you’re in Ann Arbor this weekend, come to the day-long Voices of the Middle West–a festival celebrating the literary richness of our region–this Saturday, March 12th in East Quad on the University of Michigan campus.
Join Us at Voices of the Middle West Read More »
I’m not sure if I’ll go back on Facebook. I might. But for now, I’ll continue to be thankful for everything I’m experiencing. At this moment: the sound of the wind as its moves the pines, a street light illuminating snow, the movement inside of me that is present, always rolling, always available. I still believe silence is filled with noise, but I no longer think people who want it are wrong.
Off Facebook: Listening to the Silence Read More »
Timeless, Infinite Light is a small poetry publisher based in Oakland, but to put it that way is to sap the force out of their astonishing vigor. They are a press of the dark matter of consciousness as a nexus between heritage and the glitter of possibility, of otherness as a radical force of nature blowing tenderly but insistently against the contemporary structures of power. Their “books are spells for unraveling capitalism,” as they put it themselves, and they “believe in the radical potential of collaborative, hybrid, and embodied writing.”
Small Press Snapshot: Timeless, Infinite Light Read More »
