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On Dante Alighieri’s ‘Paradiso,’ a new translation by Mary Jo Bang
Mary Jo Bang’s translation of Dante Allighieri’s Paradiso by Copper Canyon Press, 2025 displays the enduring power of this classic work of Western literature. For such an old text, a contemporary reader might be surprised by Paradiso’s continuing relevance. Dante…
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Permanent Knots and Anti-Colonial Archives: A Conversation with Daniela Catrileo
When Chilco appeared in my life, I didn’t know it was going to be a novel. I told my friends I thought I was writing a poem that had just gone on too long, a poem in free prose that…
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10 Wrong Ways to Tell It
Eventually you learn that people love to pity a victim, but more so, they love to judge a victim who practices their right to redress: CHARTER BUS FIRM IS SCAPEGOAT IN GIRLS’ SOCCER TEAM DEATHS. Shame, guilt, and confusion linger…
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The “Art Cop” in the Black Imagination: A Conversation with Brandon Taylor
“It’s really insidious the ways Black, queer, and marginal writers get sequestered from reading list culture. Unfortunately, these lists get compounded year over year, and it makes it harder to find these books. We have to read these books, seek…
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Picking Up Bones
“During all the years I’d lived in Las Vegas as a child, I’d felt like an animal trying to escape the harsh environs. In addition to the physical harshness, the desert represented, for me, the city’s cultural barrenness, the lack…
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Poems by Shira Erlichman
First Week in Her Bed 1The miracle was that no one was home. I could let the sounds out. The sounds entered through her neck & came out of my mouth. My thighs adagioed. I went 2everywhere she took me. The silence…
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On “Poppy State”: Myriam Gurba, Bruja of the Conquest
In her new memoir-in-essays, Gurba also reveals herself to be a verbal sorceress. While her previous collections traffic in rage and biting humor, Poppy State, though colored by both, expands into the more healing, elemental territory of native California plants.…
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Mississippi Dog
The dog appears again the next day, under clouds. This time when I notice her she is already sitting out there in the field, facing the broad side of E Wing that must appear to her like one long, stretched…
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How an Earthquake Put Me on a Boat
Today is the day I am supposed to be cured. “Three months,” the fifth doctor I met says. “You will be fine in three months; it just takes longer for some people.” I cling to that number, an arbitrary timeframe…
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The End is the Place We Begin: A Conversation with Marissa Davis
I remember, too, reading some time ago someone describe Black Americans as being part of a post-apocalyptic culture. We’ve survived the worst: the belly of the slave ship; the tortures wrought upon generation after generation of our ancestors for centuries.…
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After Jimmy’s Heart: Nicolas Boggs’ “Baldwin: A Love Story”
Boggs implicitly asks: is Jimmy still lovable within the fullness of his humanity?
