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
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.
“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
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
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
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, 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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...]
It Was The Scarlet That Did It: An Interview with Sarah Trembath
I first heard Sarah Trembath speak at a literary conference in Arlington, VA. I was new to the literary world, and this particular panel was focused on the different ways to publish long-form work. … [Read more...]
“Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind”: Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Alchemy and Individuation by William Bishop
It is my intention, in reading together literary critics, artists, and theorists, to show how the development of Shakespeare’s conception of his own subjectivity develops over the course of his sonnet … [Read more...]
Clara B. Jones interviews poet Reuben Jackson
Each month I attend a poetry reading at Zed's Cafe in Silver Spring, MD. Reuben Jackson, poet, jazz scholar, educator, and archivist, was the featured speaker on October 4th and, before he had … [Read more...]
A conversation with poet Meaghan Quinn
Meaghan Quinn is a poet of the body and the spirit, combining both subjects in poems which celebrate the deeper struggles of being human. I met Quinn at the Bennington College Writing Seminars while … [Read more...]
My Coleridge: On Five Poems by Sara Coleridge
‘Passion is blind not love: her wondrous might’ Passion is blind not Love: her wondrous might Informs with three-fold pow’r man’s inward sight: – To her deep glance the soul at large … [Read more...]
Love, Unforseen Poetry, and Other Radical Reforms: An interview with the Bulgarian poet Gueorgui Konstantinov
Born in Pleven, Bulgaria, in 1943, Gueorgui Konstantinov graduated from the University of Sofia majoring in Bulgarian Philology in 1967. Since then, he has been employed as an Editor in the Literary … [Read more...]
Robin Coste Lewis and A New Kind of New York
As a young girl I hated Girl Scouts. It was yet another popularity contest that I was on the losing end of, with little payoff beyond the ability to say I’d “hiked” through another bitter Syracuse … [Read more...]
Talking writing with award-winning author Courtney Zoffness
Courtney Zoffness writes fiction and nonfiction. She won the 2018 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the American Literary Review Fiction Prize, the Arts & Letters Prize in Creative Nonfiction, and … [Read more...]
”Curious and Not Un-poetical Imaginings”: A Forgotten Specimen of Victorian Cannabis Writing
“Imagination is the dream of the Unconscious.” —Benjamin DeCasseres During the 19th century, even as explorers journeyed to the last dark recesses and remote wastes of the world, and as … [Read more...]
Our Ironic Conditions are Shooting Back at Us: A Conversation with Vanessa Blakeslee
Vanessa Blakeslee's latest book, Perfect Conditions: stories (Curbside Splendor, 2018), is the winner of the 2019 IPPY Silver Medal for Short Story Fiction, finalist for the Foreword Reviews’ 2018 … [Read more...]
D.H. Lawrence’s Pansies, Nettles, and More Pansies: A Jeremiad
D.H. Lawrence is certainly most well known for his novels such as The Rainbow, Sons & Lovers, Women in Love, and Lady Chatterley's Lover. Works such as these were important in helping to further … [Read more...]
Visions, Symbols and Intertextuality: An Overview of William Blake’s Influence on Allen Ginsberg
In a compilation of his personal journals, The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice,1 Allen Ginsberg recalled a particular event, which had a strong impact on his career and on his spiritual approach to … [Read more...]
Frenchness Versus Frenchiness: Laforgue’s Translations and the “Wordly” Estate of Whitman
I, too, am not a bit tamed . . . I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawps over the roofs of the world. Walt Whitman, 1855 Leaves of Grass 1848 - New Orleans: this may have been when … [Read more...]
Walt Whitman at 200: Essays and Poems
May 31, 2019 marks the 200th birthday of poetic great Walt Whitman. To commemorate the occasion, EM presents four essays and a selection of poems. Frenchness Versus Frenchiness: Laforgue’s … [Read more...]
Remembering the Truth Dentist: Heathcote Williams by Jay Jeff Jones
Heathcote Williams (1941-2017) was an English poet, playwright, actor, and visionary anarchist. He authored the bestselling, investigative book-length poems Whale Nation, Sacred Elephant, and … [Read more...]
Bespoke Books: An interview with Jason Stoneking
Celia Galey recently caught up with Jason Stoneking in Paris, to talk with him about his current series of unique, handwritten, Bespoke Books. The interview is transcribed here. Celia: So first I … [Read more...]
A Conversation with Risa Denenberg
Risa Denenberg is a Pacific Northwest poet and publisher. We met during her launch of slight faith at Imprint Books in Port Townsend, Washington. She slipped a free copy into my hands, her … [Read more...]
At Liberation’s Heart: A (Self) Portrait of Victor Serge
“I have undergone a little over ten years of various forms of captivity, agitated in seven countries and written twenty books. I own nothing . . . . Behind us lies a victorious revolution gone astray, … [Read more...]
Notes on the Uses of the New Lyric “You”
“It is helpful to change one’s habits to address a root cause” — S. Brook Corman1 Over the last few years, I have been noticing an increasing use of the pronoun “you” in lyric poems, when … [Read more...]
At the Intersection of Linguistics and Literary Criticism: Objectivist Methodology in the Creation of Metalanguage(s) in Alain Robbe-Grillet’s La Jalousie
In his essay on Robbe-Grillet, “Objective Literature: Alain Robbe-Grillet,” Roland Barthes says of objectivism in practice that objects exist “without heredity, without associations, and without … [Read more...]
