Empty Mirror

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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...]

It Was The Scarlet That Did It: An Interview with Sarah Trembath

Hannah Grieco and Sarah Trembath

Sarah Trembath interview

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

William Bishop

‘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

Clara B. Jones

Scattered Clouds: New and Selected Poems by 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

Lauren Davis and Meaghan Quinn

Slow Dance Bullets by 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

Stephanie Limb

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

Bill Wolak and Gueorgui Konstantinov

Gueorgui Konstantinov interview and poems

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

Alexa Doran

Robin Coste Lewis - The Voyage of the Sable Venus

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 and Brian DiNuzzo

Courtney Zoffness interview - Brian DiNuzzo

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

Gregory Stephenson

Confessions of a Hachish Eater

“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

Madison Jade and Vanessa Blakeslee

An interview with author 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

Kenneth Pobo

D.H. Lawrence's Pansies, Nettles, and More Pansies: A Jeremiad by Kenneth Pobo

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

Alexandre Ferrere

Visions, Symbols and Intertextuality: An Overview of William Blake's Influence on Allen Ginsberg by Alexandre Ferrere

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

Carla Sofia Ferreira

Carla Sofia Ferreira - Walt Whitman Laforgue

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

Empty Mirror

Walt Whitman 200th birthday: 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

Jay Jeff Jones

Heathcote Williams at 217a Westbourne Park Road (undated) – photo 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

Jason Stoneking and Celia Galey

Jason Stoneking and Celia Daley

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

Lauren Davis and Risa Denenberg

poet Risa Denenberg and her book, slight faith

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

Douglas Penick

Victor Serge by Douglas Penick

“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”

Tom Holmes

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

Preston Taylor Stone

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...]

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R.I.P. Michael McClure 1932-2020

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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