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Introduction

WHAT, ULTIMATELY, IS the true way of this world? Our answer will depend, in no small part, on our perspective. When the hurricane hits, Shakespeare’s Ferdinand is the first to abandon ship, leaping into the foaming brine, famously crying out that “Hell is empty, / And all the devils are here.” By the play’s final scene, however, the chaos of The Tempest’s titular storm has resolved or dissolved into harmonic order, with Miranda registering her amazement before Ferdinand’s kingly father and his entourage: “How beauteous mankind is! O, brave...

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story

The Offering

by Mónica Crespo, translated by D. P. Snyder

Audio:

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Broadsides

2024 Winner of the Anne Halley Poetry Prize

Congratulations to MICHAEL LAVERS, winner of this year's Anne Halley Poetry Prize!

Nathan McClain and Abigail Chabitnoy have selected Michael Lavers' poem "Sun, Birds, and Leaves" from MR's Summer 2023 issue (Vol. 64, Issue 2) for the prestigious prize.

MICHAEL LAVERS is the author of After Earth and The Inextinguishable, both published by the University of Tampa Press. His poems have appeared in ...


MR Jukebox

Don't say adieu yet, my friends, in pain;
We don't know where we might meet again.

Because. . .
The touch of shared moments we'll continue to share,
The touch of shared moments we'll continue to share,
We shall meet perhaps in dreams, not a nightmare.
The touch of shared moments we'll continue to share,
We shall meet perhaps in dreams, not a nightmare.
The touch of shared moments we'll continue to share.

This autumn drenched in all the colours of love,
These faces, these glances, these postures, the sky above,
Wherever we may go, this fragrance will be there.
Wherever we may go, this fragrance will be there.
The touch of shared moments we'll continue to share.
We shall meet perhaps in dreams, not a nightmare.

Keep it watered in your hearts like a flower,
Keep it watered in your hearts like a flower,
Keep the lamp of memories lit by the hour,
This is a long journey, and night will fall somewhere.
This is a long journey, and night will fall somewhere.
We shall meet perhaps in dreams, not a nightmare.
The touch of shared moments we'll continue to share.

This wealth of moments that we all have gathered,
These emotions we gifted, these thoughts that mattered,
Even when nothing is left to us, this treasure will be there.
The touch of shared moments we'll continue to share.
We shall meet again in dreams, not a nightmare.
The touch of shared moments we'll continue to share.

LISTEN ON YOUTUBE MUSIC

 


TABISH KHAIR is an advisory editor to the Massachusetts Review and the author of various books, including the poetry collections Where Parallel Lines Meet and Man of Glass; the literary studies Babu Fictions: Alienation in Indian English Novels and Literature Against Fundamentalism; and the novels The Body by the Shore, Just Another Jihadi Jane, The Bus Stopped, Filming, The Thing About Thugs, and How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position as well as the story collection Namaste Trump.

 

 

“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

Justice for Palestine

Why Doesn’t the Sky Love Us?

- By Lisa Suhair Majaj

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Through the tent flap the child saw bomb-light
streak the sky, heard the drum of thunder
that was not thunder. She should have been
too young to grasp the proximity of death,
but this was Gaza. She asked her mother pensively,

What if I were a river? You could build a raft,
and I’d float you away from danger.

Her mother, not wanting to remind her that floating
is forbidden in Gaza, like other kinds of freedom,
that even the sea is walled off from the shore, replied,

Maybe you could be a river of song.
...


Reviews

Everyday Magic: Ayşegül Savaş’s The Anthropologists

- By Maya Gulieva

A Review of Ayşegül Savaş's The Anthropologists (Bloomsbury, 2024)

“The green jacket, the ceremonial stones, breakfast with Manu, the Dame on the terrace, and the shapes of poems,” goes Ayşegül Savaş’ magpie-like narrator Asya as she meticulously collects objects and moments with her partner Manu to build their nest, two ex-pats in an unnamed foreign city. In this all-too-relatable search, the very absence of the city’s name throws everything into question: the art of home-making, the mystery of marriage and the complexity of belonging. Feeling at once rootless and filled with promise, the couple ventures to put down the rules of how to live...


MR Jukebox

Beete Huye Lamhon Ki Kasak

- By Mahendra Kapoor, translated by Tabish Khair

Don't say adieu yet, my friends, in pain;
We don't know where we might meet again.

Because. . .
The touch of shared moments we'll continue to share,
The touch of shared moments we'll continue to share,
We shall meet perhaps in dreams, not a nightmare.
The touch of shared moments we'll continue to share,
We shall meet perhaps in dreams, not a nightmare.
The touch of shared moments we'll continue to share.

This autumn drenched...


Reviews

The Songwriter as Poet. A Conversation with Phil Elverum
(Part One)

- By Jon Hoel, with Phil Elverum

Poems are songs, songs are poems. This dictum may infuriate anyone who has ever penned an editorial on Leonard Cohen’s songs or anyone who was irate when the Nobel committee declared Bob Dylan was literature. Those familiar with the history of songwriting, however, might be inclined to agree with such an equation, knowing their shared origin points.

Anyone presented with a songwriter such as Phil Elverum—who under the moniker Mount Eerie (and The Microphones before that), has been making some of the best music of the last few decades—would be compelled to do so....


Justice for Palestine

Who Are Universities For?

- By Leyla Moushabeck

Around midnight on May 7, 2024, I was arrested on the UMass campus alongside over 130 students, faculty and fellow community members. Up until the moment of my arrest, I’d been sitting on the ground, singing protest songs and sharing out granola bars with friends and colleagues, a “Ceasefire Now” banner draped across our legs.

I joined the student-led protest to pressure the UMass administration to disclose and divest from companies profiting from the sale of weapons used in the US-backed Israeli war on Palestine, an act that violates both...


Read more on the blog

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