News & Notes | Tarpaulin Sky Magazine
News & Notes | Tarpaulin Sky Magazine
IMAGE: NOAH SATERSTROM
New at Montevidayo: “West Memphis Three, Witch Hunters, and the Cult of the Violent Femme”
At Montevidayo, TS Publisher Christian Peet examines the now infamous WM3 case, particularly law enforcement and prosecutors' obsession with Damien Echols, as part of a long history of witch hunters' predilection for the perverse.
Is Sandy Florian Latina? Or Is She Just Angry?
"What happens," asks Florian, "when someone who claims to be a Latina writer doesn’t write directly about her heritage? What happens when the African American student writes whatever the hell she pleases?"
Two New Titles from Black Ocean Books
Aase Berg's Dark Matter translated by Johannes Göransson & Rauan Klassnik's The Moon's Jaw are available for review at Tarpaulin Sky.
Michael Du Plessis’ The Memoirs of JonBenet by Kathy Acker
Because this book’s title so perfectly describes its contents, I’ll focus mainly on describing how fun it is. The Memoirs of JonBenet by Kathy Acker by Michael du Plessis delivers total delight: the book is utterly, enchantingly frivolous and plush with provocative ideas; it’s as perkily pretend as a JonBenet portrait and as exhilarating and unpindownable as anything Acker has written.
“Burgundy striations and strains of accord”: Cheryl Pallant’s Linguistic Drifts
It makes perfect sense to me that Cheryl Pallant’s background is in modern dance. In her writing, one hears a vocal movement reminiscent of the physical movement in that other art form: it is always musically aware and syntactically limber, and it contains a large measure of improvisation and play. The pleasure of reading her books is in following patterns of linguistic energies as they take shape, move, and morph.
Trickhouse Diptychs
TSky's more arty cousin, Noah Saterstrom's Trickhouse, has a new gig: Diptychs. As the name suggests, two contributors are featured at a time; one contributor will be added periodically, replacing one of the existing features. An enterprise in pairing. An undertaking in proximities.
February Volta
The February issue of The Volta is live.
Received & available for review
New books by Spencer Dew, Karel Jaromír Erben, Lisa A. Flowers, Julia Glassman, Rachel Levitsky, Cynthia Dewi Oka, and Brandon Shimoda; published by Ampersand Books, Dinah Press, Futurepoem Books, Octopus Books / Tin House, South Loop Review, Twisted Spoon Press, and Vulgar Marsala Press.
Lucy Biederman reviews Stephanie Dickinson’s Lust Series
Much of the great American fiction concerning sexual violence is set in a specific region, and as suspense and cruelty are evoked, so is a sense of place. For writers like Flannery O’Connor, Mary Gaitskill, Dorothy Allison, and Gayl Jones, the work of world-making contrasts with—or, even, is undone by—human acts that feel fundamentally disruptive. Out of this tradition comes Stephanie Dickinson and her excellent Lust Series, beautiful and terrifying in its portraits of girls unmoored “from state to state” (as the book’s first line has it).
Nicholas Mosley’s “Metamorphosis” Reviewed by Michael Mejia
Shows the now 92-year-old author still more than capable of walking the edges of innovative narrative while at the same time plumbing the moral depths he's been concerned with for more than 60 years.
A Tribute to the Late Stephen Rodefer by Martin Corless-Smith
Famously generous, a mooch, irascible, seductive, crass, subtle, childish, erudite, contemptuous of bourgeois manners, and yet at times a snob; from money, but almost a tramp at times, he was soft company, and he was hard company. He caused trouble and he made peace.
Tom Williams’ “Among the Wild Mulattos” Reviewed by Matthew Kirkpatrick
Among the Wild Mulattos isn’t simply a book about biracial identity: it's also a look into the subtleties of difference, and it masterfully charts personal landscapes with humor, empathy, and wonder.
Marina Zurkow’s “The Petroleum Manga” Reviewed by Michael McLane
A catalog of petrochemicals assessed and personalized by nearly three dozen writers might seem like an unlikely theme to center a collection around, but this is exactly what Marina Zurkow curates in her unnerving and eerily charming project, The Petroleum Manga.
Ander Monson’s “Letter to a Future Lover” Reviewed by Kelly Lydick
An odyssey of linguistic complexity, your book, Letter to a Future Lover, appears to me as part catalog of experience, part treatise, and part question, a compendium of letters and errata, proof that we read and write to understand life.
Melanie Jordan’s “Hallelujah for the Ghosties” Reviewed by Barbara Duffey
Through multiple readings, I come back to continued ambiguities that refuse to reconcile themselves, and that’s the paradox at the heart of Jordan's poetic project: a system of “personal abstractions” that are emotionally poignant, intellectually complex, and physically and sonically beautiful.