Songwriting and Poetry in Sadie Dupuis’s Cry Perfume
Sadie Dupuis’s poems read like they would make interesting songs. These would be songs not of the finger-picked, delicately confessional coffee-house sort, though, but of the spikily asymmetrical, disjunctive sort, with guitar solos that sound like automobile accidents.
Pamp’s Books
“In reading Pamp’s books, I found myself strangely transposed. I occupied both the position of literary critic working to understand century-old biblical exegesis and that of discoverer of a forgotten family text.”
Juan Felipe Herrera’s Poetry for the People
Many of Juan Felipe Herrera’s poems are dedicated to those who have died tragically, victims of violence. Herrera has made the choice to try to engage with these acts of violence, and to act with love for the lives lost.
Manhattan Beach’s Portrayal of the Ocean
In Jennifer Egan’s 2017 novel, the ocean invites characters to dream beyond the confines of their own lives, to become a true part of the world.
Finding the Self in Departure
Leaving the boarding school world was terrifying and painful, but also felt like an act of daring—and it called to the fore other qualities of myself that felt hard to set down, even when I chafed under their burden.
Infatuation and Imaginative Language
Lovesickness of the kind Cynthia Ozick describes is intimately linked with language. The essay, both in content and form, suggests that the beauty and purpose of infatuation is in its generation of language, a purpose particularly fruitful for a writer.
“Climate change is coming for us all”: An Interview with Matt Bell
Matt Bell’s Appleseed is a sci-fi novel. It is also a re-imagining of a western, a portrayal of a dystopia, and a techno-adventure. Above all, Appleseed is a novel of warning, an air-raid siren of impending environmental collapse.
The Radical Grief of Obit
The elegies in Victoria Chang’s new collection show us how grief radiates from a central loss inwardly toward self-examination, and outwardly toward collective grief.
Love, the Archive
If you have ever broken up with someone or been broken up with, you have likely experienced that unique quality of love: its archive. Laurie Colwin’s 1986 collection describes this lonely archive, its characters turning their love over in an occasion of happiness and sadness alike.
The Radical Politics of A Christmas Carol
In 1843, Dickens read a report from the Parliamentary Commission on the Employment of Women and Children and was horrified by its findings. He resolved to write “something to strike the heaviest blow in my power” on behalf of those he saw as the innocent victims of the Industrial