News & Notes | Tarpaulin Sky Magazine
News & Notes | Tarpaulin Sky Magazine
IMAGE: NOAH SATERSTROM
What I’m Reading Now … by Julia Cohen
Julia Cohen on Claudia Rankine's Citizen, Layli Long Soldier’s “38,” Alexis Almeida’s “It’s Growing Stronger,” and teaching creative writing in the wake of the 2016 Presidential Election.
Vi Khi Nao’s “The Old Philosopher” reviewed by Cheryl Clark Vermeulen
"Each poem in the collection affirms its protean self, its questions of how we name the world—particularly, gender—and its melding of love and violence, sexuality and god, politics and clothing, or play and discomfort."
Anca Cristofovici’s “Stela” reviewed by Matt Kirkpatrick
"Based on Cristofovici’s childhood in Soviet Romania ... Stela is built from fragments: compact, lyrical chapters, like glimpses of dreams, function to create an emotional and psychological space of longing.... A splintered dream of lives interrupted, rendered in electric prose."
Jean Valentine’s “Shirt in Heaven” reviewed by Elisabeth Whitehead
"There are thresholds, doors, windows to cross though. In silence and listening, a reaching. The hunger and drive to find a bridge...."
C.D. Wright’s “Shallcross” reviewed by Celia Bland
"Shallcross testifies to an artistic truth rather than a factual one, including gestures toward the ghost world, the dusk where evening comes down, but with always keeping an eye on the light of the sun, the places where a self comes into its own, speaking of 'wonder and regret.'"
J’Lyn Chapman’s “Beastlife” reviewed by Arianne Zwartjes
"A sumptuous feast and a rotting; grotesque and greenly lavish all at once. Published by Calamari Archive in 2015, Beastlife is a beautifully designed book, delicious to the eyes as it is to all the other senses.... Bursting with fecundity and fetid detail, with lush green overgrowth and the stench of death and feathers."
Joy Harjo’s “Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings” reviewed by Kelly Lydick
"Affirms that the personal is political, that the environmental is personal, and the microcosm cannot be separated from the macrocosm. It is a call to a deeper way of seeing, feeling, and being in the world."
Joseph Massey’s “Illocality” reviewed by Elisabeth Whitehead
"With little presence of an 'I' that calls attention to itself, the words themselves seem to take on the dress of animation. Sometimes the words click. Sometimes they snake or fold. Sometimes they pause to breathe."
Craig Dworkin’s “Alkali” reviewed by Martin Corless-Smith
"Alkali is a magisterial kunstkammer, a new periodic tableau planted in a crystal garden of arcane knowledge and preposterous invention, a glockenspiel orchestration of aural augury that dances an irresistible instance of our geo-lyrical world."
What I’m Reading Now… by V.V. Ganeshananthan
V.V. Ganeshananthan discusses books by Rohinton Mistry, Solmaz Sharif, Ralph Ellison, Grace Paley, and Toni Morrison.
What I’m Reading Now… by Heather June Gibbons
Hackers by Aase Berg (translated by Johannes Goransson) Channeling flatworm [...]
What I’m Reading Now… by Jennifer S. Cheng
TS author Jennifer S. Cheng discusses books by Victoria Chang, Anne Anlin Cheng, Emily Dickinson (edited by Jen Bervin and Marta Werner), Vievee Francis, and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing.
What I’m Reading Now… by Danielle Deulen
Danielle Deulen discuses work by Hannah Lillith Assadi, Samiya Bashir, Lindsay Bernal, K.A. Hays, Brandon Som, and John Yau.
What I’m Reading Now… by Rachel Abramowitz
"Give me the weird," writes Rachel Abramowitz, who discusses books by Joe Abercrombie, Clarissa Pinkola Estés PhD, Shirley Jackson, Kenneth Koch, and Mary Ruefle.
What I’m Reading Now… by Aimee Harrison
Aimee Harrison discusses books by Yoshimasu Gozo, Nick Montfort, Evie Shockley, Shira Dentz, and Albert Meister: "...in a way, a time-capsule of our cruelty and our love."