An Inquiry of Place
The Gathasaptasati is a volume of poetry, mostly written by women, and was supposedly collected and edited by the Satvahana king, Hala.
In two weeks I’ll be having open-heart surgery, which comes with a 2% risk of death. The risk is low enough to not cause too much worry.
This comes with its own problems. Knowing I’m about to go through substantial surgery without substantial risk causes some rather dissonant thoughts.
Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London by Lauren Elkin (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2016) is an uneven read that delights and also disappoints.
The problem is, there are two books trying to exist here, but neither has been given enough time or attention. History-Flâneuse tackles the concept of a flâneur: a wanderer, city-walker, bohemian, and man of leisure. (In French, this word was created in the masculine form, thus the concept has exclusively described men who live a dharma-bum lifestyle. Flâneuse is the female form and Elkin is trying to make Flâneuse happen.) Memoir-Flâneuse retells a few uninspiring stories of romantic relationships gone awry set in various cities of the world.
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Richard Adin, Founder and CEO of Freelance Editorial Services and of the “An American Editor” blog. What follows is our discussion of his journey to become an editor, his experience in the industry, and his advice on a number of topics.
Ezra Dan Feldman’s poetry collection “Habitat of Stones” (Tebot Bach, 2016) is tied together by a certain “arrogant man.” This recurrent theme throughout the collection also bumps up against notions of the body: its finitude, its mortality and the struggles and regret of intimate relationships.
Laura Sobbott Ross has been writing poetry since she was a teenager. Her writing has appeared in The Florida Review, Meridian, and many others. She was a finalist for the 2016 Newfound Anzaldúa Poetry Prize, as well as a finalist for the Pushcart Prize and the Arts & Letters Poetry Prize in 2016.
The rally call went up in the first months of 2016.
Writers of all ranks came together and decided that they must work harder than ever to ridicule, satirize and attack the new political world. They had not voted for things like Brexit and Trump, and these ideas were not only the annoying chirps of uninformed, they were the enemy of liberal, innovative art.
Dust connotes decay, lifelessness and ephemerality. It symbolizes the cyclical nature of the ecosphere.
Dust in my imagination is more humble. It is not the fascination with cyclical history that attracts me to it but rather the mundane, everyday-ness of it.
Once a year, Newfound Journal awards its Prose Prize to one author and publishes their work in a chapbook. I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Mark Leidner, winner of the 2016 Prose Prize, about some of the themes of his winning work and his relationship with writing.
Rebecca Henderson: Mark, did you write this piece specifically for the Prose Prize, or was it something you already had written?
Mark Leidner: I saw the contest advertised when I was in the middle of writing it. I thought because it’s multiple stories within a single story, it would make a good chapbook if selected.
This weird sensation came over me the other day while driving.
Happiness.
Nico Amador’s “Flower Wars” is a collection that lives up to its oxymoronic title. It is grounded, it is alive and growing, but it is also full of tension, power and conviction. The 2016 Anzaldúa Poetry Prize winner is nothing less than the heartfelt work of a poet formed by the strength of his political beliefs and his desire to understand and express his place in the world as a queer, trans and mixed-race poet.
To write is to create and destroy. What once was constructed can be torn down at any moment, and yet what remains can very well be so effective as to be forever built upon. Words act as the vehicle for our everyday lives. Without language, we cannot express the kaleidoscope of human emotion, nor impact future generations.
The annual conference of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) is no joke. It’s the largest writers conference in the US, welcoming 12,000 or so attendees each year. If you have the good fortune to attend, you will find yourself in a sea of literary types–writers, publishers, editors, and more. Does that sound exciting, but also so overwhelming your stomach hurts and oh my God maybe you should cancel?
Here are some guidelines for making the most of this experience: