1. Scattered with nebulous crockery we talk mothers their grief, their limpid yearning. Your father is to my father only quantitatively. His grandmother and her worried son frantic across the rutted old table. Our earnest faith constructs so much glaring, translucent joy. I do describe his shoestring body and lie when I wish his wife…
The Oldest College Literary Magazine in the Nation
From February, 2020
Sunday Staff Picks: February 23rd
The Gilded Auction Block by Shane McCrae Addressing America, Shane McCrae’s speaker in “Everything I Know About Blackness I Learned from Donald Trump” says “even in my dreams I’m in your dreams.” McCrae’s The Gilded Auction Block turns America and the American dream inside out, and in doing so creates a surreal logic—a fractured but incisive way of looking at contemporary America. Although the epigraphs are often quotes from the current political moment, the book undergoes a traditional narrative of katabasis when the speaker descends into Hell to confront a Trumpian figure (among other demons). McCrae’s attention to enjambment, rhythm,…
Sunday Staff Picks: February 9th
Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener Everyone who’s worked in publishing has had the same dream: flee New York, join a tech company, and make barrels more money in an office filled with top-of-the-line snacks and California sunshine. Anna Wiener carries out the dream and chronicles how it dips into the nightmarish in her memoir, Uncanny…