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In Defense of IPAs: A Limerick Manifesto

August 3, 2023 - By Marsha Bryant

But I like it
Because it is bitter
—Stephen Crane

It’s audaciously hoppy for me!
Bring on bitterest beer ecstasies!
They’re not one big “hop bomb.”
Brewers craft, with aplomb,
The hop spectrum. Such badassery!

Some fear hops and endeavor to slay
Every tongue-biting flavor away
With juicification—
An abomination!
Give me robustly bold IPAs!

If your tongue is too weak, step aside!
I advise that you best not deride
Those of sturdier stuff: For we’re all tough enough
To drink beers where the bitter abides.

1.
Stone’s Delicious is IPA bliss—
Amply hoppy, with citrusy kiss.
O you’ll relish each...

10 Questions for Tyler Kline

July 25, 2023 - By Lara Stecewycz

It helps to think of your mind
as a landscape. Picture the grooves
and valleys carved like a penknife
to bark from years of compulsions;
it’s so easy following where the flood
knows it must go.
—from “From the Porch, A Moth,” Vol. 64, Issue 2 (Summer 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
One of the first poems I wrote was about cherry tomatoes. I was working on a vegetable farm and spent a lot of time harvesting tomatoes. I remember using the word “hubris” to describe the tomatoes (I guess I thought they were gloating because of how delicious they were?). In any case, it was a terrible poem, but when it becomes tomato season, I always think of it.

What writer(s...

(Almost) 10 Questions for Susie Meserve

July 20, 2023 - By Lara Stecewycz

I hate AJ, Sam says, he steals
my blocks and punches me. AJ
didn't go to preschool. Here in the kitchen
my son narrates his day: phonics, Play-Doh,
the device he calls sand timer whisking away
choice time.
—from "Bioluminescence," Volume 64, Issue 2 (Summer 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Fourth grade, a poem called “Breeze.” Everyone around me was in agony over the assignment—we had to write acrostics about some kind of weather, then illustrate them—but I finished mine in record time. I thought, what’s so hard about writing poetry? Little did I know.

In high school, I wanted terribly to write good poetry. I was reading...

Open Letter to the APAC administration

July 17, 2023 - By The Editors of the Massachusetts Review

July 17, 2023

To the Administrators of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center:

We, the editors of the Massachusetts Review, are writing to express our deep disappointment and concern regarding the recent and very unexpected cancellation of this year’s Asian American Literary Festival, just weeks before its opening and after over a year of planning and investment, in both human and monetary terms, by countless organizations and individuals. This year’s festival was more important than ever, following the last several years of anti-Asian violence and hate crimes in the U.S., and we know many writers from around the world who made plans to attend and bring their creative energies together at this critical time. The last-minute cancellation of the...

10 Questions for Colin Bailes

July 11, 2023 - By Lara Stecewycz

Less his offense and more

the punishment, how Actaeon was pursued
by his own hounds,

devoured by that which he thought he had tamed—
is that what I mean when I say

I, too, watched hunger
consume me?
—from “Actaeon,” Vol. 64, Issue 2 (Summer 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
This is a difficult question to answer because I started writing dreadfully embarrassing song lyrics when I was very young—throughout middle school—and transitioned to what you might call poetry my freshman or sophomore year of high school. Even then, though, I wasn’t writing anything noteworthy, although I certainly thought I was at the time. The same could be said of the poetry I wrote...