On March 26, 2022, MR joined Paperbark for a reading at the Augusta Savage Gallery, as part of The Future is Now—Art. Sustainability. Activism. To purchase a copy of the CLIMATE issue of MR, click here. “The UMass Fine Arts Center, the MFA for Poets and Writers, and the School of Earth and Sustainability, are working to create deliberate opportunities . . .
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S.L.Cassar, Smyrna after the Great Fire. 1922. Public Domain. The centennial of the Great Fire of Smyrna is in 2022. “Today [Monday, 11 September 1922] I saw with my own eyes the Turks taking bombs, gunpowder, kerosene and everything necessary to start fires, in wagonfuls here and there through the streets,” the . . .
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Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, late September 2002. A beautiful fall morning. What was once called an Indian summer, but Jacob is learning to expunge such phrases from his lexicon: Indian summer. Dutch treat, French kiss. Is French kiss okay? Not that it matters; he hasn’t French kissed a guy in months.—from “Simple Past . . .
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There will never be an endTo this droning of the surf.—Wallace Stevens, “Fabliau of Florida” As Spring breakers, vacationers, snowbirdsHit the beaches of Florida, these wordsIn my limericks hereAre to recommend beersFor your forthcoming excursions seaward. From the Gulf and Atlantic-side makersOf craft brews that pair well with breakers(And the sunshine and . . .
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The day I arrived on the butter schooner a cow had fallen off the cliff. Its carcass was found on the beach in the cove below, near the high tide line, by some men waiting to load the hogs and butter onto the boat for the return trip to San Francisco. Everyone . . .
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It is easy to believe there are no flowersgrowing in the folds of sand stretching before us.Night has erased them. And the Blue Moondoes little to illuminate anything but the sand:—from “Blue Moon,” Volume 63, Issue 1 (Spring 2022) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.One of the first . . .
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Editor’s note: On March 28, 2022, in Bowker Auditorium at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the UMass School of Earth & Sustainability, in partnership with the Fine Arts Center and the MFA Program for Poets and Writers convened a unique meeting of artists, climate and social scientists, and activists working at the intersection . . .
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Pure fabrication, interpretation, and lies. Where is the line between these different types of distortion of truth? And how deep have we sunk? In Russian, there is a word that suggests there is indeed a distinction: the word “vranio” means something between baloney and untruth, it is used to refer to a . . .
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My name is DeDe and I’m eleven years old. D-e, capital D-e. It’s not short for anything. My dad’s name is Bobby and that’s not short for anything either. Our names are similar, both made of two of the same consonant sounds. BO-Bby. DE-De.—from “Cockroach,” Volume 63, Issue 1 (Spring 2022) Tell . . .
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Serhiy Zhadan, reading in Kharkiv, March 21, 2022 Editor’s note: There are many ways to show solidarity with the people of Ukraine, and to stand for civilization, against barbarism. Over the last seven days, we’ve offered you a poem from Serhiy Zhadan, so that you will think of his words, and of . . .
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