Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
About this project: In English as well as Polish, the word for the chart of symbols containing information about how to read the map is called a legend. There is more here than just two-dimensional spatial orientation. There are also stories, interpretations, memories. Thus, each little circle representing this little town or that giant city is more than just a fact, but the center of a complex web of…
Henry leaned back on his leather recliner holding a cellphone and credit card. He wrote online reviews and rated products according to a system of caterpillars. More caterpillars meant more butterflies, ergo, a better chance of succeeding on the open market. Any day now, he hoped to hear from some investor interested in taking his site viral. He listened to the Home Shopping network. Now an infomercial about a…
In a society where we constantly apply filters to images, swipe on them, and leave comments underneath them, the collection of poems in the Summer & Fall 2018 issue of Poetry Northwest offers uncropped views of the realities often diluted in today’s world. The issue, although hailing from the northwestern corner of the United States, is comprised of poetry by more than fifty contributors from all over the country,…
The Devil Says Maybe I Like It (Propeller Books, 2018) by Wendy Bourgeois is seventy-four pages of funny, thought-provoking, and fulfilling prose. Each of the seventeen essays in this brief and lovely book offer meaningful and challenging bits of wisdom and humor. An hour and a half into my reading, I found myself inspired to compose my own “Public Apology for Lack of Sexual Integrity,” armed with…
There are many ways to tear a person apart, and the stories and poems within Virginia Quarterly Review’s Summer 2018 issue prod and poke at the external and internal causes. From Hannah Louise Poston’s nonfiction about a scandal in the beauty community to Kaveh Akbar’s poems that feed the unknown, the writers in this issue of VQR capture the unrest in our current American climate. Part of the appeal…