(Jules Chametzky. Photo by Jerome Liebling, courtesy of Rachel Liebling) Jules and I were colleagues before we were friends. We met in 1973 when we joined about a dozen faculty, aggrieved by budget cuts and administrative incompetence more broadly, on an organizing committee aiming to unionize faculty and librarians on the UMass . . .
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On Thursday, September 23, the founding editor of the Massachusetts Review, Jules Chametzky, died in Amherst, at the age of ninety-three. To commemorate his passing, and to offer his friends an opportunity for reflection and remembrance, we offer here a small gathering of memories, collected from a few of his friends. I . . .
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The manatee’s strangest feature is she’s alwaysworking, seven straight ruminant hours pawing shallow floors for mangrove leaves and pickerel weed.Even sleeping half the day, each quarter hour—from “Anxiety Medication,” Volume 62, Issue 3 (Fall 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.In elementary school I wrote a story about . . .
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Near a creek where his mother said don’t dare go, a young boy spots a garter snake, jaws surrounding a half-swallowed worm, compelling the boy to bend at the knees, starting the descent toward the lumbering snake. It’s then that he buckles from weakness in his legs, ignored for days as a . . .
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This is a story of a mole. It was about the size of a pea, light aubergine in color. He still remembers how it felt under his fingers: how it stood, pert and taut, when pressed down; yet how pliantly it leaned over when caressed sideways. A little oddity he would always . . .
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Lovely as milk, smooth as a knell,bodiless and meade of breaths,a blue bed of pollen, lace, mesh, the sea ranlike a prayered tongue, the waves—from “The City Opposite Nineveh,” Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.When I was younger we moved around India . . .
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Happiness: a wind through a blight of poppies. It takes a long time to unlatch something like that. To open up a parenthesisthat looks like a burningred poppy.—from “[Longing],” Volume 62, No. 2 (Summer 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.The first poem I wrote in what felt . . .
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annunciation is what we call the day when Mary conceived a son blue has been known to belong to the gods even though it bespangles both men and death and cloaked in it Mary was told she’d be blessed at least among women—from “Blue,” Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021) Tell us . . .
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Trust your move, Galileo, in the warringstarry fields. The bone I own.—from “Galileo Stumbles Once & a Planet Suddenly Skews,” Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.I wrote a poem about mud in fifth grade that I was really proud of; it was . . .
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