A few times a week, Yiadom-Boakyepainstakingly cuts oil paintings she believesaren’t up to snuff. Instead of re-primingthe canvas, she reduces it to 2 X 2 ½-meterpieces. She begins again. This isn’tan ars poetica. Once, I made love in daylight.—from “Poem After an Iteration of a Painting by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Destroyed by the . . .
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Original article, pubished 02/07/2020: I’ve always loved this country, just as I’ve learned to love the somber colors and the soft scents that waft off the pages of books. I don’t really know why. In spite of the weather, in spite of life’s own inclement seasons, I learned to love it. Sometimes . . .
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(Editor’s note: What follows is indeed the latest in our “Next Best Thing” series, introducing you to people and events that you’ll wish you hadn’t missed. In this case, though, you’ve been granted a second chance: Karen Skolfield will be reading this weekend, as part of LitFest at Amherst College. Saturday at . . .
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How they get you is first they give you moreto do by rolling out two more machinesbut slowing down each loom to 100 beatsa minute to mitigate the impact of workingtwo looms at once and this is what they calledback then the stretch out and once they stretch you outonce you get . . .
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Secchia’s Flood – Soliera, Modena, Italy – December 12, 2017. Photo by Giorgio Galeotti, Courtesy of Creative Commons. (Editor’s note: With this post from the Italian novelist Giacomo Sartori, the Massachusetts Review inaugurates “After Us,” a new blog series that will focus on the climate crisis and the ongoing, devastating toll wrought . . .
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If Pappaw hadn’t been murdered, I wouldn’t even consider doing this test. Yet, here I am. Against my better judgment, I spit into the plastic tube then check to see if I’ve reached the fill line. Not even close. I suck the inside of my cheeks to produce more saliva and spit . . .
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(Documentary Poster, Courtesy of the Archive of the American Dance Festival) Pearl Primus, Omowale, Child Returned Home is a new documentary by Stan Sherer, in collaboration with Peggy and Murray Schwartz, authors of the Primus biography, The Dance Claimed Me: A Biography of Pearl Primus (Yale, 2011). Pearl Primus (1919-1994) blazed onto . . .
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liabilityassetsupposing brainssharpsurpassingeverything, anything—from “Liability,” Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.Well, I could tell you, but I would have to kill you. Actually, when my mom came to live with my wife and me, more than thirty years since I had left my . . .
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my mother was never mistakenfor a junkshop trumpetor a yard sale saxophone, not even axylophone with its teeth knocked out,nor was she a late nighttone deaf lounge siren,but there was enough cacophonyand wild-ass mock jubilationcrueler than moneypouring out of the instrument of her throatto stun a family of bison,—from “Friday Night Fights,” . . .
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The first man Kalo ever loved was a hustler—a killer, too. In that way she was blessed. He taught her two things (more, but this is what she will share): all you got in this life is your balls and your word; play your hand close to your chest. The city Kalo . . .
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