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10 Questions for Adrian Matejka

July 21, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

Slowest-footed day of the week,
wrong noted & creaking on
the credenza while the other

influencers gossip in the kitchen's
linoleum.
—from "Tuesday Feeling", Vol. 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first time I wrote a poem was in March 1994. I remember it so vividly because I was in Bloomington, Indiana walking across a field near campus. I was listening to Miles Davis’s version of “Footprints” and for just a moment, I thought I understood his language of trumpets. I got my notebook out and wrote a draft of a poem called “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down” that ended up in my first book 9 years later. That’s one of the...

10 Questions for Bettina Judd

July 19, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

you are falling for someone in hell. which may mean that you are
trying to love in america in there is no guarantee. there is never a guarantee
& yet here is your foot, willfully arched over the edge.
—from "you are falling for someone in hell." Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Ever? I think it was a poem about the moon. I was maybe 5 or 6 years old.  

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Lucille Clifton, absolutely. The body of my grandmother’s unpublished poetry. Toni Morrison’s exacting and mythical language in Beloved for example.

What other professions have you...

10 Questions for Mike White

July 16, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

God sees me
as a bird
sees an airplane

moving at a great
distance.
—from "God Sees Me", Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I was in tenth grade I had an English teacher who asked the class on a regular basis to write short stories that would be graded by our classmates (he was getting very close to retirement). Given that an A was guaranteed, there was no academic or creative pressure, and so I’d write outrageous, mock-serious tales designed to amuse my friends. I can’t recall any of the narrative details now, but I’m sure it was the best writing I’d done to that point, and for at least a decade thereafter.

...

Ordination of the Cherry Trees

July 14, 2021 - By Greg Snyder and Ruth Ozeki

Warfield Place, Northampton

12 July, 2021

Editor’s note: Below are opening remarks delivered by Kanshin Ruth Ozeki, novelist, Zen priest, Smith College professor, and resident of Warfield Place, followed by an abbreviated description of the ordination ceremony, and concluding with remarks delivered to the trees by Kosen Greg Snyder, senior Zen priest, co-founder of Brooklyn Zen Center, and Senior Director of Buddhist Studies at Union Theological Seminary.

Kanshin Ruth Ozeki:

Thank you all for coming. We are here today to ordain these seven venerable Kwanzan cherry trees that...

The Murakami of Our Times

July 13, 2021 - By Z.L. Nickels

A Review of Haruki Murakami's First Person Singular. Transl. Philip Gabriel (Knopf, 2021)

The most significant story I have ever read was a Murakami story. I cannot say which one, only that it appears in the collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Consider this withholding a sacrament in the name of preservation: once you admit what is most important to you, you have committed an indelible act. I am not willing to surrender myself in this way. I have come too far (and taken far too long) to give up the ghost of the writer I wish to one day be. To relinquish this possibility would require my being fully convinced of myself. It would require being Haruki...