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In Memoriam, Gianni Celati (1937-2022)

In Memoriam, Gianni Celati (1937-2022)

I came to know Gianni Celati through his writings (if knowing a person in this way is possible), beginning in the late 1990s when I found his book Narratori delle pianure (“Storytellers of the Plains,” translated as Voices from the Plains) in a shop in Ferrara, a town in northern Emilia Romagna not far from . . .

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10 Questions for Brian Turner

10 Questions for Brian Turner

Here is a portion of the silence we walk upon, where the stony shore of the Atlantic curls breakers of salt onto a shelf of the lithospheric dead. At our feet, ammonites in their obsidian-colored whorls.—from “The Jurassic Coast,” Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2021) Tell us about one of the first . . .

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A Valentine’s Brewquet

A Valentine’s Brewquet

1With its wild fermentation and pour,The Framboise is a beer to adore.It stays true to the berryAnd fizzes so merri-ly. Tongue-tickling tartness galore. 2Malty forward, this silky Milk StoutShows what creamy dark ales are about.It’s primarily roasty(Some chocolate, some coffee),And finishes creamy side out. 3Liquid Springtime, this bright ÉphémèreBlossoms crisply, lets in light and air.With its . . .

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10 Questions for Vanessa Place

10 Questions for Vanessa Place

August besieged California with a heatunseen in generations.I watched as towering plumes of smokebillowed from distant hills in all directionsand air tankers crisscrossed the skies.—from “The Fire Sermon,” Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.Stendiamo un velo pietoso. What writer(s) or works have . . .

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Black Ram Today

Black Ram Today

Dear all, I’m writing to give y’all an update on the efforts to stop the hideous Black Ram proposed timber sale on the Canadian border in Northwest Montana’s Yaak Valley, where only three adult female grizzlies with cubs remain. This ancient forest, a survivor from the last period of global warming, 800 . . .

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10 Questions for Alex Kuo

10 Questions for Alex Kuo

Alex Kuo in Beijing’s 798 Photo credit: Zoe Filipkowska Pyne’s count could be extrapolated further: a hundred cloud-to-ground lightning strikes per second. Such strikes account for about 10 percent of the annual wildfires in the United States, and since 1982, there has been an alarming rise in the total number, directly linked . . .

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“Chocolat” Soldiering and the White Myth of Recovery

“Chocolat” Soldiering and the White Myth of Recovery

A review of David Diop, At Night All Blood Is Black. Trans. Anna Moschovakis. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. Lyricism is, strangely, no stranger to the trenches of the First World War. Whether to contain or to inflame the horrors, writers like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, David Jones and Erich Maria . . .

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10 Questions for Alexis Orgera

10 Questions for Alexis Orgera

A tankercapsized offthe Georgia coast, 4,000 Hyundaisslippingto their murky deaths—From “The Book of Other,” Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.I can do more than tell you about it. Here it is: Kiwi Fuzzy footballin the sand.Shave the beardand bite the chin. In . . .

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10 Questions for Salar Abdoh

10 Questions for Salar Abdoh

My mother does not know a lot of things, and yet she remembers many things. When I tell her over the phone that I am thinking of learning how to sail a boat, she does not ask how it is that I could do something like this in Tehran, a city far . . .

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Birdsong

Birdsong

Meg Kearney’s All Morning the Crows (The Word Works, 2021). Shelley begins his famous, “To a Skylark”: “Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert. . .” Then for the next few stanzas he works hard to show the “birdiness” of the bird, until he finally gives up in a series . . .

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