Life for Llansol, at least going by these books, seems to have been something more flowing and organic than even an agua viva of the “I” as Lispector defines it.

After disaster, there is only disaster. It is a familiar and unrecognizable present. And whether we recognize it or not, whether we read it or write it or not, we are living the climate crisis.

Only now do I realize that I venerated Sula during a period in which I became numb.

Chang has been referred to as China’s Joan Didion.

Life for Llansol, at least going by these books, seems to have been something more flowing and organic than even an agua viva of the “I” as Lispector defines it.

Chang has been referred to as China’s Joan Didion.

Tawada’s is a fiction of resistance — to capitalism, imperialism, normative emotional expectations — and that can, sometimes, look a lot like cruelty.

Rather than crafting a character study or a love-at-first-sight romance (though the novel includes elements of both), Ganieva attempts to encapsulate Dagestan’s complexities, interrogating its customs, politics, and religion.

“Bearing witness I think is the best of what poetry can do sometimes.”

“To me, the most interesting aspect of writing is how it captures what it’s like to be a thinking presence in the world.”

I’ll be like, “I toured with the Silver Jews and Titus Andronicus! Why didn’t anyone publish my memoir of this scene?” And then my nurse will tell me to settle down.

Mary Leader says: “A poem is a thing.” By that definition, a poet would be someone who makes things. I think any narrower definition would seem to me needlessly exclusive.

After disaster, there is only disaster. It is a familiar and unrecognizable present. And whether we recognize it or not, whether we read it or write it or not, we are living the climate crisis.

The history of the novel is also the history of people coming into an understanding of themselves, of the ways in which we use art not only to reflect but also to change ourselves.

What unites both modern subcultures and modern terrorists (and terrorist subcultures) is no coherent ideology but a set of shared affective responses to social chaos—and if the last decade of culture has any lesson to give, it’s that emotional tourism has never been more popular.

The world described by Herrera’s thematic border trilogy is a present that despite—or because—of its hints of the archaic, has the ring of a dystopian near-future.

Only now do I realize that I venerated Sula during a period in which I became numb.

I’m sure it will surprise no one if I say that St. Paul’s scales are not the only literary detail in the Bible which is passed over with very little explanation.

The proliferation of a kind of heroin porn may be normalizing the epidemic, but it is failing to humanize it.

Last year on this date I claimed, “I think it’s safe to say that, at this moment, where we find ourselves now, we need good reggae more than ever.” Plus ça change….