I spent three of my four high school summers, in between pre-college programs and summer swim team, shelving books at my local library. I envisioned it as romantic, glamorous, the kind of thing quirky and intelligent girls who roll their hair into ponytails around uncapped highlighters (in a strange imitation of the more culturally offensive trend of chopstick-like hair décor) do for a summer volunteer position. I thought I would be able to read the volumes as I shelved and stocked, and I certainly thought I would be allowed to sit down sometime in my four-hour shift. I was wrong…
The Oldest College Literary Magazine in the Nation
From Blog
Confession and Silence: Father Logan’s Dilemma in Hitchcock’s I Confess
More than fifty years after its opening night, I Confess remains one of Hitchcock’s least popular films. Even upon its release, many believed the film did not live up to the standard Hitchcock set for himself with his acclaimed necrophilic drama Notorious (1946) and The 39 Steps (1935) which he directed at just 35 years…
Poetic Traditions on Twitter
I don’t think it would be wrong to say that most people, old and young, aren’t particularly enthralled by old poetry. Metric and stylistic traditions in poetry are things to fear. Too much work has to go into understanding the choices that inform the meaning of the poem. For a lot of people, high school…
Poetry, Prose, and Rock ’n Roll
Poets don’t usually open for rock shows. But Shea Stadium — no, not the real one, but a DIY venue in a warehouse in Brooklyn filled with Christmas lights and Mets logos — encourages the strange. So on a cold night in early October, poets Margaret Ross and Jenny Zhang and author Leslie Jamison took…
Prophet of Profit: Drake as a Popularizer of Capitalism
Recently, a BuzzFeed article entitled “47 Drake Lyrics For When You Need an Instagram Caption” has been surfacing frequently on my Facebook News Feed along with hilarious new dubbings of Drake’s now famous “Hotline Bling” music video. Although I often use Aubrey Graham’s lyrics in my Instagram captions to convey emotions ranging from solipsistic self-confidence…
Recommended For You: Radio in the Age of Personalized Media
There are few things I miss about suburbia. However, some rituals work best in certain settings, and for me, one of those rituals was the time spent driving alone in automobile-dependent suburbia. Whenever I started my car, NPR would turn on, and every weekday morning, for the fifteen minutes it took me to get to…
Poetry: “Fall (SpaceShipTwo)”
I am nine miles above you and falling fast once iron groans and peels away from me and strapped to this rock I am birthed too heavy there is no air up here and slammed, gut compressed to spine I could not breathe anyway but for a feather I would still be…
You Hothouse First (Poem)
“Special Order Tulips are the only bulbs available for shipping during the early fall months.”—tulipworld.com Tomorrow morning 1 man’s brain puts a million other men’s brains on hold. Tom is my dad’s name and will likely be my son’s, my protagonist’s, my god’s. Feminism works in the ways I say it will. No,…
A Talk with P.J. Sauerteig of Slow Dakota
Though PJ Sauerteig (CC ’15) just graduated a few weeks ago, he has already produced an impressive discography. Under the name Slow Dakota, Sauerteig has released three EPs, and has a fourth one ready to record. A signee of Fort Wayne based Massif Records— Sauerteig himself is a Fort Wayne native– Slow Dakota releases all of…
On Anthologies (Blog)
My greatest shame is that I own one song from a best-of-Willie-Nelson album. Don’t get me wrong — Willie Nelson is a lovely man, very talented. I don’t happen to know much of his music, aside from the single song I once heard on an easy-listening radio station in rural Maine. I’m not ashamed to…