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Historical Punctum: Reading Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard Through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida

Tom Holmes

Native Guard and Bellocq's Opheli by Natasha Trethewey

Not much has been written about Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia or Native Guard, and what has been written is mostly about the racial content of the poems. Quite a bit, however, has been written … [Read more...]

Panic In The Rear-View Mirror: Exploring The Work of Richard Siken and Ann Gale

Rhienna Renee Guedry

What we are attracted to can sometimes intimidate or unsettle us. In the case of art and writing, the work we find powerful demands our attention, sometimes even a second encounter. Poets may shock us … [Read more...]

“Art has side effects,” I said.

Bobbi Lurie

Art has side effects, I said - Bobbi Lurie - Marcel Duchamp

“Art has side effects,” I said. quitting art finally at death I woke up at the end of a dark hall … a man was staring at me intensely … I felt a shock run through me … it was a guy from the … [Read more...]

On Empty Mirror’s First Twenty Years

Denise Enck

Empty Mirror - 20 years

On December 30, 1999 I left my last day as a retail store manager, and I never looked back. I'd worked in and managed bookstores and wanted to open my own. I'd been collecting out-of-print, signed, … [Read more...]

Remembering and Jane

Nazli Karabiyikoglu

Remembering and Jane Austen - Nazli Karabiyikoglu

That night you heard voices say remember, remember. You did your best not to remember. You spread a meter of cloth and started painting on it. Colors called for other colors and you portrayed the … [Read more...]

Pablo Neruda and the Virtues of Laziness

Joseph Rodgers

Pablo Neruda and the Virtues of Laziness by Joseph Rodgers

As history progresses, writings from the past can often take on fresh and unexpected potency; for instance, returning to the ecologically-focused poetry of Pablo Neruda, I found new significance in … [Read more...]

Kristin Garth on her new collection, The Meadow — an interview by Amy Suzanne

Kristin Garth and Amy Suzanne

Kristin Garth The Meadow poetry

Kristin Garth, the author of several superb poetry collections, has built a career out of bringing together elements that seem strange in concert: Libraries and sex; Barbie dollhouses and stripping; … [Read more...]

Carlos Moreno, Translator of Agustín Guambo’s Andean Nuclear Spring, Interviewed by Clara B. Jones

Clara B. Jones

Agustín Guambo, Andean Nuclear Spring, translated by Carlos Moreno

It is not every day that one reads a poetry collection destined to become a collector's item. However, the emerging Ecuadorian poet, Agustín Guambo's, Andean Nuclear Spring, translated by Carlos … [Read more...]

Sitar and Sanskrit: Bill Wolak Interviews Srinivas Reddy

Bill Wolak and Srinivas Reddy

Srinivas Reddy

Srinivas Reddy began his musical training as a guitarist and composer. In 1998 he graduated from Brown University with a BA in South Asian Studies and completed his senior project entitled NaadaSat, a … [Read more...]

Readability Versus Creativity: On Susan Howe and Reading Poetry

Leticia del Toro

Contemporary writing demands originality from the artists, and it requires they develop their creativity employing other means and materials in their works. With the written works, it is quite … [Read more...]

Boats for Women: An Interview with Poet Sandra Yannone

Lauren Davis and Sandra Yannone

Boats for Women - poems by Sandra Yannone

I first met Sandra Yannone through a series of emails, as one does in this day and age. She had found my work at a small bookstore in Washington State, and being the supportive literary … [Read more...]

Questioning Our Characters: Performative Identity in Nella Larsen’s Passing and Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape, by Ben Berman Ghan

Ben Berman Ghan

The literary body of New York City is a literature of being tightly packed in, of living alongside the inescapable presence of millions of people, in layers of diversity that “encompass race, class, … [Read more...]

Beautiful Raft: An Interview with Tina Barry

Hannah Grieco and Tina Barry

Beautiful Raft by Tina Barry

Tina Barry is a poetry and fiction writer who mixes and bends genres with a deft touch. Her work can be found in journals and anthologies, on lists of Pushcart nominations, and in two larger … [Read more...]

Freedom in the Physical and Digital City: Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West

Ben Berman Ghan

Exit West: a novel by Mohsin Hamid

Within the text of Mohsin Hamid’s 2017 novel Exit West, migration is always possible, but the text radically overhauls what the journey involved now entails. Cities across the world are no longer … [Read more...]

Mutinous Jester: The Collage Novels of Akbar Del Piombo

Gregory Stephenson

Is That You Simon? Akbar Del Piombo

Akbar del Piombo — illustrious subterranean luminary, mysterious, pseudonymous author of six darkly comic, wildly satirical collage novels. Akbar del Piombo — preposterous, portentous name, once … [Read more...]

Sait Faik Abasiyanik: The Man Who Faithfully Embraces the World

Nazli Karabiyikoglu

Sait Faik Abasiyanik

His face is hung on the top of my bed. Most of the time, when I walk towards the bed, I see the reflection of his face. I burst in anger. Before I go to sleep, I plan on how to get rid of him while … [Read more...]

Faces on the Tip of My Tongue by Emmanuelle Pagano: Nataliya Deleva interviews translators Sophie Lewis and Jennifer Higgins

Nataliya Deleva, Sophie Lewis and Jennifer Higgins

Faces on the Tip of My Tongue - Emmanuelle Pagano

I met Sophie Lewis and Jennifer Higgins at the launch event of Faces on the Tip of My Tongue (Peirene Press) in the cosy bookstore [email protected] The conversation unfolded in a relaxed and … [Read more...]

Peacebuilding Through the Arts: An Interview with Mahmood Karimi Hakak

Mahmood Karimi Hakak and Bill Wolak

Mahmood Karimi Hakak - interview with Bill Wolak

Mahmood Karimi Hakak is a poet, author, and translator. In addition, he is a theater and film artist whose creative and scholarly works are focused on peacebuilding through the arts. He is the founder … [Read more...]

Writing Through Icons: Rosalind Palermo Stevenson and Stephanie Dickinson on Franz Kafka and Jean Seberg

Rosalind Palermo Stevenson and Stephanie Dickinson

Stephanie Dickinson and Rosalind Palermo Stevenson conversation

Authors Rosalind Palermo Stevenson and Stephanie Dickinson converse about writing through the personas of Franz Kafka and Jean Seberg. Rosalind Palermo Stevenson: Stephanie, your poetic and … [Read more...]

Fluency in Translation: Avoiding Homogeneity and Ethnocentrism by Alice Banks

Alice Banks

root exposure / credit: de

Today, fluency is widely considered a necessity of literary translations into English. But what is fluency, and is it a goal to aim for in translating, or something we should avoid? First, we must … [Read more...]

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Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

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Recent features

  • My Father’s Map
  • On Waiting
  • Seeing Las Meninas in Madrid, 1994
  • Visual poems from 23 Bodhisattvas by Chris Stephenson
  • Historical Punctum: Reading Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard Through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida
  • Panic In The Rear-View Mirror: Exploring The Work of Richard Siken and Ann Gale
  • “Art has side effects,” I said.

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