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Homebound on Whitman’s Open Road

- By Marsha Bryant

Winter kept us warm . . .
T. S. Eliot

I’m writing this on National Beer Day in the United States, where we’re also celebrating National Poetry Month. So it’s a good time to catch up with the fifth Whitman tribute from Bell’s Brewery, Song of the Open Road. In these quarantine times when we’ve got time on our hands, a slow-sipping Winter...


Hard Way to Go

- By Jim Hicks

Photo: Prine in 1975. Tom Hill/WireImage

Like a lot of folks since the news came in, I’ve been listening again to John Prine. Among his fans, though, I suspect I was the only one to be reminded of a class in Paris with the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, a few days after Christian Metz—the film theorist—passed. I remember that day Deleuze addressed the matter simply and purely: “We should return to his work.” That’s all we can do, but we can at least do that.

John Prine’s death anytime would have broke the dams for most of us, but in today’s waters it’s hard not to hear—and feel—more than an undercurrent of outrage. After all, the guy beat cancer twice. And now this? Against the global drumbeat that now...


After Us

Virus X and Ending the Forever War

- By Jason Oliver Chang

(Action Comics. #363. DC Comics. May 1968.)

In the spring of 1968 Superman contracted “Virus X,” a disease cooked up by Lex Luthor in a prison laboratory. The #363 issue of DC’s Action Comics serial told a four-part story of a viral attack on the hero from planet Krypton. In the comic, the devious Luthor labels Superman as the “Leper from Krypton,” shaming him publicly and striking global fear of a “Virus X” pandemic. Were it not for the penetrating rays of white Kryptonite crystals, brought to him by unexpected allies, the disease might have taken Superman’s life. It nearly did. This Cold War superhero tale drew close parallels with an actual epidemic, in 1957 – the onset of the H2N2 viral infection, then...


10 Questions

10 Questions for Tad Bartlett

- By Edward Clifford

While the storm dances outside, rats huddle in the shadows at the far end of the attic. Julie can barely make them out from where she sits, an old wooden-handled axe and a battery-operated lantern by her side, the gable window rattling in its frame above. Other shadows shuffle about down close to the eaves. Raccoons, possums. Julie tries not to think what else. Ghosts, probably.
—from "When the Storm Comes," Volume 61, Issue 1 (Spring 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I was in 8th grade English class, our poetry unit started with the assignment to complete the sentence, “Poetry is like ________.” I wrote in the word “shit,” then left to get some water, intending to...


Reviews

Massachusetts Reviews: Absent Altars

- By Elmira Elvazova

Paper-Thin Skin by Aigherim Tazhi, translated by J. Kates. Zephyr Press, 2019

For a debut poetry collection, Aigerim Tazhi’s Paper-Thin Skin is a work of stunning originality. Part of what makes this work so compelling is the way that it grapples with the mystery involved in the creative process, namely the act of turning “everyday life into a miracle,” which requires a kind of searching and tuning-in to all frequencies until one finds a clear signal. The poetic imagination, which alights at making connections between seemingly dissimilar things, is the focus of the book, revealed through the speaker’s interest in mitigating internal worlds with external realities....


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