I’m Cold, Please Touch Me: The Freezer Door by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Sycamore wrote this book long before pandemic time, and yet it couldn’t have arrived at a better moment.
...moreSycamore wrote this book long before pandemic time, and yet it couldn’t have arrived at a better moment.
...moreBut David eventually comes to realize that he, too, holds a certain level of privilege.
...moreGrief begs to be analogized, not to be tamed exactly, but somehow made approachable.
...moreThe collective reimagining in Seismic calls for literary revolution.
...moreSimply put, the novel’s heart is not political but sensual.
...moreTo learn is perhaps Voisine’s primary goal in writing the poems in The Bower.
...moreTranscendent Kingdom becomes an experiment in itself.
...moreBut look at this poet-speaker speaking the unspeakable!
...moreYou want to live by your ideals, but it’s hard to make them align with reality.
...moreAnd if you ask of her to come to you, her answer is refusal.
...moreBut Griner is too skilled a realist to allow The Book of Otto and Liam to become a simple revenge story.
...moreViolence can be turned around, turned into pleasure, or an act of freedom, or an act of defiance.
...moreWhen the novel begins, Alma is in the car, speeding away from her life.
...moreIn its imagery and mood, the collection feels distinctly April.
...moreIn short, lightness is the capacity to leave without regret.
...moreWhen was the first time you remember seeing yourself in a book you were reading?
...moreLearning to read a landscape can reveal a deep history.
...moreThese writers expand the meaning of the word home by virtue of their lives and their writing.
...moreStill, Smith’s sadness does not serve to disintegrate her zeal for living.
...moreLanguage enacts violence through manipulation.
...moreBarbara Berman reviews four books in her 2020 Holiday Poetry Shout-Out
...more[Y]ou can’t grow up in a cultural milieu and be immune to what it loves.
...moreThe pages of Alexandria Hall’s debut collection, Field Music, are liquid.
...moreWhat Taussig does, then, is ground these ideas in reality through her own lived experiences.
...moreFor the longest time, John Stanley’s Little Lulu was one of the best kept secrets in comics.
...moreIf you’re going to Hell, bring a good guide.
...moreWhat a fitting end to the postmodern literary experiment. Or are we just getting warmed up?
...moreWymer is grappling with survival, with the cost of the duplicity of identity.
...moreWhat does it mean to be free?
...moreFigures from antiquity—those masks of learned, privileged poets—are rendered utterly contemporary, down to earth.
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