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10 Questions for Tina Cane

March 5, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

We speak sparingly      to ourselves      indulging instead a devotional of lists
soft tyranny of small needs      abject and quotidian      underneath which
the broad sweep of desire      our machinery grinds      for poverty
—from “Letter for Elena Ferrante: Devotional,” Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The very first poem I published was in high school—in Dans Le Vent, my school's French Journal. I was studying French, so I submitted this terrible poem called "Le Jardin de Printemps," filled with cloying...

Silence Like Blood (Working Titles Volume 5.1)

March 3, 2020 - By Marie-Célie Agnant

The Massachusetts Review presents the latest Working Titles e-book: Silence Like Blood, a novella by Marie-Célie Agnant, translated and with an introduction by Dawn Fulton. Available now!

"My Dear Claire,

If I’m writing to you, it’s only out of respect for the promise I made, not, as you asked, to tell you everything I see. For I can only see what is shown. This letter will likely be incoherent and very long. I can’t help that. But I will try to put...

10 Questions for Ama Codjoe

March 3, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

A few times a week, Yiadom-Boakye
painstakingly cuts oil paintings she believes
aren’t up to snuff. Instead of re-priming
the canvas, she reduces it to 2 X 2 ½-meter
pieces. She begins again. This isn’t
an ars poetica. Once, I made love in daylight.
—from “Poem After an Iteration of a Painting by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Destroyed by the Artist Herself,” Volume 60, Issue 4 (Winter 2019)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Just the other day, my mother mentioned, by name, a poem I wrote in high school. What’s special to me is that she remembers it.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
There seem to be at least...

Port-au-Prince, my love no longer

March 2, 2020 - By Dieulermesson Petit-Frère, translated by Siobhan Meï

Original article, pubished 02/07/2020:

I’ve always loved this country, just as I’ve learned to love the somber colors and the soft scents that waft off the pages of books. I don’t really know why. In spite of the weather, in spite of life’s own inclement seasons, I learned to love it. Sometimes in spite of myself. A love that weighed so heavily on my shoulders, that sometimes I’d buckle underneath it, wary of its raison d’être. It’s been several years now that I’ve questioned the purpose and validity of this love that’s become a burden. Books, however, I continue to love to the point of taking them hostage. I still talk about...

The Next Best Thing: Dressed to Kill

February 26, 2020 - By Janet R. Bowdan

(Editor’s note: What follows is indeed the latest in our “Next Best Thing” series, introducing you to people and events that you’ll wish you hadn’t missed. In this case, though, you’ve been granted a second chance: Karen Skolfield will be reading this weekend, as part of LitFest at Amherst College. Saturday at 11:00 a.m., in the Frost Library.)

Welcome to the Jones Library, and Amherst, and to this book launch/poetry reading. If you are perhaps a Skolfield-Goeckel, or if you know Karen through ice hockey, or through poetry, or if you have wandered in thinking, “A poetry reading! Maybe there will be wine & cheese,” well,...