Emily Keeler: Anne Carson at IFOA
Anne Carson Wednesday, October 30, 2013 The line is so long and the lobby is so small and we’re all here to see a poet who is improbably famous but very deservedly beloved. As soon as I take my seat in the dark theatre, I notice a who’s who trickling in, authors and publishers and...
In Conversation: Catherine Leclerc & Robert Majzels
Catherine Leclerc (CL): For Sure is the fifth novel by France Daigle that you translated. For our readers, 1953: Chronicle of a Birth Foretold (1997) was the first, then you went on with Just Fine (1999), A Fine Passage (2002), Life’s Little Difficulties (2004), and now For Sure. This almost seems like a cycle, especially since Daigle’s latest novel explicitly refers to 1953 and comments on it, as can...
Chris Gilmore on Alice Munro’s Prue
"Prue." The Moons of Jupiter, Alice Munro. Penguin, 2006. Essay By Chris Gilmore Prue: "Somebody Who Doesn't Take Herself Too Seriously" In "Prue," the title character is described as "somebody who doesn't take herself too seriously" (Munro 130). In moderation, humility is an admirable trait; however, Prue's humility is so pervasive that it becomes a generalized sense of...
Aimee Wall on Vickie Gendreau’s Testament
Testament, Vickie Gendreau. Le Quartanier, 2012. Essay by Aimee Wall JEAN SHORT PARTY.DOC We are enfants terribles. We are fils absents. We are du même nom de famille plate. We are histoire plate. We are même pas dignes de mention. We are quand même dans ta playlist. We are pas loin de plein d'autres noms...
Lemon Hound Turns One: A Prose & Narrative Folio
Bark, Bark! Lemon Hound turns one! For our one-year anniversary we offer you a special Prose & Narrative folio. We do so to affirm our commitment to engaging in a wide swath of contemporary literature and signal our intention to publish the best, most exciting new voices. Our first ever folio includes excerpts from several...
Krystal Languell: Five Poems
Sense The plots are: loss, gain, or new friend. All man vs. himself. I am in search of who will watch me do my tricks. What do you do when you’re not getting stressed out. Tell me to let the knife do the work. Begin an idea. So punk I can’t spell descendants right...
Toby Altman: Paragraphs on Lyric Poetry
I will refer to the kind of writing in which I am involved as lyric poetry. In lyric poetry the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an author uses a lyric form of writing, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution...
Stephen Collis: Towards a Dialectical Poetry
Towards a Dialectical Poetry[1] 1. The Problem of Names In trying to make some distinctions within radical poetries, I want to begin with the problem of names—what we mean when we call poetry “innovative,” “avant-garde,” or “experimental.” INNOVATIVE. Perhaps currently the most common word to designate the poetry lying outside the supposed “mainstream,” “innovative” as...
On Reading & Reviewing: Anita Lahey
When I was editing poetry reviews for Arc Poetry Magazine, I had my radar tuned for pieces that were mean-spirited, careless or just plain blind. These sins, however, were rare, and when caught (usually) easily addressed. What troubled me more was reticence, reserve—any smokescreen cloaking the reviewer’s true feelings. I believe a review should offer...
Jaime Lee Kirtz on Juliana Spahr
Gentle Now, Don’t Add to Heartache I. We come into the world. We come into the world and there it is. The sun is there. The brown of the river leading to the blue and the brown of the ocean is there. Salmon and eels are there moving between the brown and the brown and...
Misreadings: Jonathan Ball on Yann Martel
Life of Pi, Yann Martel. Vintage Canada, 2002. by Jonathan Ball Misreadings imagines alternative (or détourned) versions of literary and film works, and subjects these nonexistent imaginings to analysis. Let's imagine that Yann Martel's much-admired and much-maligned novel Life of Pi is, in secret fact, a horror novel. The most obvious horror-story aspect of Martel's novel...
Tanis MacDonald on Shawna Lemay’s Hive: A Forgery
Hive: A Forgery, Shawna Lemay. Self-published, 2012. Reviewed by Tanis MacDonald To say that Shawna Lemay’s poetic prose in Hive: A Forgery reminded me of Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept may be to invite a weighty – or overblown – comparison of Smart’s classic to Lemay’s more recent text....
