Columns
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Hear the River Laugh
In the blink of an eye he slipped under. The flash of a foot popped through the river’s amber hue downstream from where he’d been. I stood on the side of the bank. Other swimmers reached into the river from…
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The Shackles of Crime: John J. Lennon’s “The Tragedy of True Crime”
There are more sides to a person than a prison sentence can reveal.
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Something New
Forcing myself, muscling through the mental pain. This is what I remember most of my own recovery. After the brief psychiatric hospitalization at eighteen, I returned for my second freshman semester hell-bent on erasing my failures, erasing the girl I’d…
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The Object of Our Attention: Marisa Meltzer’s ‘It Girl’
…what is it? And can it explain why Birkin’s life is the one we are currently examining, when there are so many others out there who likewise deserve to be “at the center of [their] own narrative”?
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A Poem Invites You, Warns You, and Then Confounds You: A Conversation with Adedayo Agarau
In The Years of Blood, though, I think what is critical is the multiple selves that exist in the collection. The I resists a single voice—sometimes dead, other times, alive and in fear—and I think that, that is fascinating to…
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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.…