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Volume 60, Issue 4

Front Cover by Anna Schuleit Haber, Bloom, 2003. WHITE MUMS AND ORANGE TULIPS ON THE FIRST FLOOR OF AT THE MASSACHUSETTS MENTAL HEALTH CENTER, BOSTON. Commissioned by the Harvard Medical School and the Department of Mental Health of Massachsuetts.

Courtesy of the artist.

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Introduction

SIGMUND FREUD ONCE offered an outline of the relations between poets and their dream-worlds. Unlike much of his work, his words on this subject still seem as rich and insightful as they must have appeared in December of 1907. For this issue, which celebrates our magazine’s sixtieth year of publication, the psychoanalyst’s observations are particularly relevant. The influence of history on the poetic imagination, Freud comments, “hovers, as it were, between three times—the three moments of time which our ideation involves.” First, the imagination encounters “some current impression, some provoking occasion in the present”; from there, he notes, “it harks back to a memory of an earlier experience”; and finally, “it now creates a situation relating to the future.” He concludes, “Thus past, present, and future are strung together, as it were, along the thread of the wish that runs through them.”

I...

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“We are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest [...] the teachings of Thoreau are alive today, indeed, they are more alive today than ever before.”

—REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. (MR 4.1, Autumn 1962)

From the Blog

blog

Call for Submission of Native-authored work

- By

With the '20s rolling thunderously into place, we at the Massachusetts Review are seeking unpublished work for our first special issue of the new decade. MR's editors and guest editors—Tacey Atsitty, Laura Furlan, and Toni Jensen—are looking for new Native-authored work of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and hybrid texts for a special issue responding to the 400th anniversary of the Plymouth landing. Submissions can be sent (as Word or PDF files) to MRPlymouth400@gmail.com. Please put the genre and title in the subject line ("FICTION: Title").

Deadline: March 31, 2020.

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Interviews

10 Questions for James Janko

- By Edward Clifford

10 Questions for James Janko

If I had really good eyes, I might see the threads that join me to the crowd, or even to one old man, this fellow next to me, for example, his cheeks as flush as a Christmas card Santa, his eyes moist, his hand over his heart as he gazes at the flag and sings. He is, by all accounts, normal.

—from "The Anthem and the Angels," Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I was a truant in high school, but I began writing a novel my junior year. I stuffed handwritten pages into an empty Tinkertoy box until it was full. I have no idea what my novel was about, but I remember my older sister,...

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10 Questions

10 Questions for Annie Zaidi

- By Edward Clifford

 

You know the greatest myth? ‘Mirror, Mirror, on the wall.’ World’s biggest hoax. Yes or no? Because the mirror never says: ‘You, my queen! You are the fairest of them all. —from “Mallika Reflects on the Events of Discount Monday,” Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I’d written a short essay about my mother for our college magazine. Mothers, cows and festivals were common topics for essay writing in schools and colleges. My contribution found a bit of appreciation though. I remember being stopped by a couple...

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10 Questions

10(ish) Questions for Jacob Paul

- By Edward Clifford

What writer(s) or works have...
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