Since the US election, there have been two major debates on the left and in the broader public about the implications of Trump’s election and his assumption of the presidency. The first has concerned the relationship between the Trump movement and various potential historically analogous movements, especially fascism. The second has involved . . .
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“The same week his father died, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart conducted a funeral for a starling he had purchased three years ealier in Vienna. Guests at the service wore solemn attire, and Mozart, then thirty-one, eulogized his pet as “not haughty, quite, but gay and bright.” “My heart,” he said, “aches when I . . .
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“Rhythm is the seed, the littlebody we planted in fear of the dark that rose to adornand outlive us. It crawled…” –from “Found Music” which appears in the Winter 2016 issue (Volume 57, Issue 4). Tell us about one of the first pieces you’ve written I was fortunate to have two teachers . . .
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As a Canadian citizen and U.S. permanent resident—with an “Alien Number,” no less—the concept of “Our America” is, well, foreign to me. Defining nationhood in possessive terms reflects the notion that nationalism is the work of imagined possession and therefore also exclusion. If something is ours, it cannot be yours. This election . . .
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Love Letter to America Dear America, I sat down to write you a breakup letter. But I can’t tell if I want to break up with you, or if you have already broken up with me. Does this election mean that we are going through a rough period, or that we are . . .
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“What little that’s rooted must arise.Like, who plants in cups except kids? Enter the forest. The forest will eat you,men in balaclavas who haven’t read Marx. And so on, including the starry skies.You’ve seen a sieve? Explosions unto mesh…“–from “Vegetables” which appears in the Fall 2016 issue (Volume 57, Issue 3). What . . .
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The earth too is a magic coach, my dear,look at the flocks of elves that pull itdown dark virgin forests of the universe,and a witch or two, it’s known, would like to diverge itinto a coy ditch, in a passionate embrace.—from “Mozart’s Magic Coach” which appears in the Winter 2016 issue (Volume . . .
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“The flute, the sackbut, the dulcimerin the rooms of the dying. The harp,the cornet, the psaltery. The look…”—from “Music from a Farther Room” which appears in the Winter 2016 issue (Volume 57, Issue 4). Tell us about one of the first pieces you’ve written I remember being twenty-one or twenty-two and writing . . .
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“these hands, their roughness if you tell me what to swallow, I’ll do it sheathed in ice, brittle as glassanother kind of groping in the dark a blue note fills the room climb on top, again and again…” —from “Goldberg Variations” which appears in the Winter 2016 issue (Volume 57, Issue 4). Tell . . .
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