Features & Reviews
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Far from Usual and Better for It: The Layered Poetics of Allison Blevins’s Slowly/Suddenly
Slowly/Suddenly is presented as a diptych in the Table of Contents, perhaps mirroring Blevins’s commitments to other forms of art, but her poems’ progression from Part I to Part II is not a linear narrative, not a Before & After.
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Taking to Heart Unbearable Reality: The Rumpus Interview with Jorie Graham
As I say to myself, living under the reality of this new, second cancer, I am rich in minutes. Maybe not in years, or, who knows, even months. But minutes, yes. So, I try not to squander them.
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Take a Good Look: Lisa Taddeo’s Ghost Lover
“Crystal” was really her name. She was always as gentle as she could be. I am grateful to her for that.
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What does it mean to believe in something: A Conversation with Nancy Marie Brown
But this sense of being able to open yourself up to wonder is something you can do at any age. You just have to open yourself to it. Frankly, for me, it’s a whole lot easier to do that when…
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Sharpening the Pencils: Kristín Ómarsdóttir Challenges the Structure of the World
I need secrets. I need unregistered playgrounds. I want to hide my steps. It should be my right to hide my wanderings, don’t you think?
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I Have to be Gentle with Myself: A Conversation with Sari Botton
I imagine the full picture of me in scrubs and Danskos, being an MRI technician and then coming home and writing. Somewhere in an alternate universe, MRI technician Sari exists. I already have the Danskos.
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How the World Happens to Us: Lucy Ives’ Life Is Everywhere
Lucy Ives has proven herself to be one of our greatest under-the-radar geniuses, but an achievement like Life Is Everywhere demands attention. The systems have long been in place, but everyone will see them now.
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The Correlation Between Love and Essay-Writing: An Interview with Jill Christman
Practicing deep curiosity and close observation is fundamental to writing essays. We need only to look at our small children to teach us these lessons.
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Escaping the Infinite: An Omnibus Review of Four Contemporary Works of Poetry
So everything should be very clear.
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Embodied Voices: A Conversation with Sonya Huber
So many of the metaphors we use that come from the body and bodily experience are ableist and predicated upon a notion of “normal.” In educational systems, that idea of “normal” has led to serious accessibility issues, to separate and…
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Finding Land: Audrey Magee’s The Colony
“When you look at the colonial system, one of the things they want to eradicate is the native language, because they don’t understand what’s going on and they can’t control it.”
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Can we be too alive together? A conversation with Chris Martin on poetry, autism, and our neurodivergent future
The way we arrange the conditions of our togetherness can allow all the writing to happen that beckons to happen.