Warfield Place, Northampton 12 July, 2021 Editor’s note: Below are opening remarks delivered by Kanshin Ruth Ozeki, novelist, Zen priest, Smith College professor, and resident of Warfield Place, followed by an abbreviated description of the ordination ceremony, and concluding with remarks delivered to the trees by Kosen Greg Snyder, senior Zen priest, co-founder of . . .
Read More
A Review of Haruki Murakami’s First Person Singular. Transl. Philip Gabriel (Knopf, 2021) The most significant story I have ever read was a Murakami story. I cannot say which one, only that it appears in the collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Consider this withholding a sacrament in the name of preservation: once you admit what . . .
Read More
The biggest snakeis an albino so huge his scales, when they lift from his bodyas he curves around a rock or rodent, look like big, dry, flakes of oatmeal.—from “The Rattlesnakes They Keep in the Life Sciences Building Remind Me of My Dog” Tell us about one of the first pieces you . . .
Read More
A Review of Dariel Suarez’s The Playwright’s House In his debut novel, Dariel Suarez takes the reader into the heart of Cuba, of Havana, of the people of the island. As a Cuban American, I notice how the people of the island are often erased from the stories set in Cuba, the stories . . .
Read More
I realize my daughter just turned seven and doesn’t knowI was seven when my mother crept into my carpeted roomwhile I played a video game to say my father, who had beenfar away taking fluids from tubes in a California hospital,has died.—from “Scrubbing the Skillet”, Volume 62, Issue 2 (Spring 2021) Tell . . .
Read More
Cigarette smoke woveinto my curls, right through 100%madras from India, breathed blue-tinged, dizzy bluethrough every alveolus,as my mother lurched the cardown Wisonsin Ave., jamming gasand brake pedals, tilting——from “Osmosis,” Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021) We asked Rebecca Kaiser Gibson the same 10 Questions we ask our other contributors. She responded with . . .
Read More
A Review of The Deposition by Pete Duval (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021). I’m going to be straight with you: this is not going to be one of those neutral and dispassionate reviews. The fact is, I know Pete Duval. Not only have I chosen his work (including stories in this volume) for publication . . .
Read More
I am singing about the undone things cited on buried bones.I am singing them because I like to imagine a valley with a library on it.A library with catalogues that don’t always read, sorry for the losses.I like to imagine a lot of things but death.I am familiar with how each momentoutweighs the . . .
Read More
My first instinct is to translatethe word. Make it easier to understandwithout saying the word itself.I feel guikt for this mistake—for changing languages insteadof describing. Isn’t this an easy way out?—from “We Play Charades,” Volume 62, Issue 1 (Spring 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.I imagined my . . .
Read More
But this I aspire to—how to do a job welleven if it fights you beak and wing.How to carry the delicate,difficult thingwherever it needs to go.—from “The Owl Catcher’s Son,” Vol 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.In Tampa, near where I went to college, there’s . . .
Read More