Editor’s Note: This post inaugurates a new MR blog series, where we share online introductions given at guest appearances by some of our favorite speakers, writers, artists, and thinkers. Intros are, by definition, ephemeral, but that doesn’t mean they always should be. You’ve all heard great ones, the sort that don’t try to . . .
Read More
“I have a persistent fear of being a strange person in a normal world. I know this fear is not uncommon. The world—and I along with it—hopes to be normal, someday. Sometimes, though, it is better not to hope for this. The world has a long history of being strange and surprising, . . .
Read More
The Massachusetts Review presents the latest Working Titles e-book: THE KEEPERS OF THE GHOST BIRD by Jenn Dean—available this week! From THE KEEPERS OF THE GHOST BIRD: From the air, Bermuda resembles a jeweled and pregnant seahorse, hanging by its tail from the Sargasso Sea. Its top and bottom wrap around two ancient volcanic calderas, one . . .
Read More
1. The world is the sum of facts and birds. 2. Every proposition has form (or syntax: the profile of a Siberian goldfinch) and content (or semantics: the belly of a Siberian goldfinch). 2.1. The contents of a glass of milk, which could be a human body transmitting songs about birds, are . . .
Read More
An orphanstands in the sky. An orphan with a huge headis nailed to the boundless sky in light-blue ink like a Jesuswithout grief on his face, . . . —from “Night of the Full Moon,” by Shen Haobo, translated from Chinese by Liang Yujing (Fall 2017) Tell us about one of the . . .
Read More
A wine crate for a nightstand, and on it, a rosegone bad in a cup. Its water a swallow of shadow, murk of rotand sugar. Clothes sloughed, bodiless, and half- eaten on a plate,a plum in its juice. . . .—from “Still Life with Hemorrhage,” Fall 2017 (Vol. 58, Issue 3) Tell . . .
Read More
“The wretched of the earth do not decide to become extinct, they resolve, on the contrary, to multiply: life is their only weapon against life, life is all that they have.” James Baldwin, a twentieth-century American writer, was forced to make racism his business—he was part of a people segregated at birth . . .
Read More
It’s right there in the title of the New York Times obituary: John Ashbery’s work is not only “celebrated,” but it is also “challenging.” PBS calls the poems “enigmatic,” while for NPR they are “confounding.” The more knowing and admiring pieces by poets or critics (sometimes the same people) nuance the point, while still emphasizing difficulty. Mark Ford’s sympathetic . . .
Read More
First, it will feel like surprise. Like the edge of somethingunconsidered: a glass let go; an open palm;how cold a mouth can be and still say love,still say okay. —from “Love & Hypothermia,” in Summer 2017 (Vol. 58, Issue 2) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.The first poem I wrote . . .
Read More
That last February before the war and the hard years that were to follow it, forty-one years after the Leader’s revolution, Laila woke to the sound of explosions in the street. She sat clutching the blanket, eyes darting, half expecting to find herself buried in dust and rubble, her vision slowly adjusting . . .
Read More