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Celebration

January 5, 2021 - By Jim Hicks

The Regal Lemon Tree by Juan José Saer (Open Letter, 2020)

Though I’m less than certain about the world, and definitely not optimistic at all about this country, as far as I’m concerned the New Year couldn’t have started better. I spent it at a family celebration: three brothers-in-law, two of their wives and all the kids, the girls back from the big city, a friend in tow as well, roasting a lamb, sitting together outside around a big table, reminiscing about old times and imagining the future, drinking lots of red wine—eventually some local musicians showed up, and then the dancing began. It doesn’t get any better.

Okay, yeah...

10 Questions for Sonya Chyu

January 4, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

The first day of their year arrived four weeks later than the rest of the world's. Or, perhaps, the rest of the world's year had simply started forty-eight weeks early. In either case, the day was marked by great occasion: work and study were suspended for a week to accommodate cross-country travel and family reunions.
—from "The Middle of Things," Volume 60, Issue 3 (Fall 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
My first published piece, "Sartorial Shedding," was birthed from a Creative Writing course taught by the always-witty Ernesto Quinones at Cornell University, and inspired by the summer I had just spent in Thailand as part of a business internship program. Though I am not Thai, the...

On Light

December 31, 2020 - By Erri De Luca, translated by Jim Hicks

(Photo: “M.R. Cursing the Darkness—Solstice 2020,” Videography: Daniel Warner.)
 

Defined as a wave, yet it has no shore.

It comes to a world created, in the third verse of the scriptures.

To ignite it was needed: “And God said, Let there be light.” (Three syllables in Hebrew, yehi ‘or.)

From then on letters have produced light. Before or without them the world is left in the dark.

Of its speed philosophers debated: Empedocles, Aristotle.

Then men of science: Galileo, Einstein, and Goethe among them, who died with its name on his lips. (Mehr Licht, more light.)

From a firefly to lightning, from a candle to the moon, its name...

Autumn Journal on Autumn Journal: 23-24

December 29, 2020 - By Michael Thurston

Read Parts 20-22 here

“Now I must make amends.”

It is often said (when people are talking of the “Auden group,” those poets who came to prominence with Auden in the Thirties) that MacNeice was the collective’s resident skeptic. Others, you will hear—from Samuel Hynes in his book, The Auden Generation, from Edna Longley in her study of MacNeice, from Robyn Marsack and Beret Strong and Peter MacDonald in chapters on MacNeice, even from Seamus Perry and Mark Ford in their recent London Review of Books podcast episode on MacNeice—flirted with political commitment (Stephen Spender is usually singled out as the most gung-ho enthusiast for movements, but...

Autumn Journal on Autumn Journal: 20-22

December 24, 2020 - By Michael Thurston

(Photo: Christmas Rose, Helleborus x hybridus, Winter Jewels “Jade Tiger,” White Flower Farm)

Read Part 19 here

“So much for Christmas”

Vita brevis, ars longa. The week before Christmas finds MacNeice in London’s National Gallery. Outside, movement continues and suggests ephemerality. Inside, “Other worlds persist,” caught and elevated to significance by the artists’ attention, by the achievements of form.

Last March, sensing how things were going and that museum doors would soon be shut, I stole an hour between meetings to duck into the Smith...