I’m very excited to publish the below essay by Jessica Suzanne Reidy, which looks at a Romani poem about the apparition of a witch, a traditional character in Romani folkore. In the interest of readers fully understanding the culture that this poem (and this essay) come from, I would like to provide a brief introduction and some context. Romani denotes the ethnic group more commonly referred to as Gypsies. Dr. Ian Hancock, Romani linguist and scholar, explains in Roads of the Roma that the first Romani were likely many groups of people in Northern India, from low-caste Indians to African migrants, sent to fight an invading Muslim army, around the 11th century C.E. After the war was lost, most of the enormous army moved with their families through the mountains and West toward Europe (Hancock, 15-17). Throughout the journey, Romani were met by hostile and xenophobic locals. They endured a [...]
Note: The Hesperides are divine nymphs in Greek myth who tend a blissful garden in some idyllic corner of the Western world, and are associated with the golden light of sunset. Some images from the original archive are unavailable. Patty Hyland is a freelance illustrator in the NYC metropolitan area. She is currently working on her first webcomic, Tri-UMPH!, a humorous seafaring adventure epic. You may find more of her work on her and pages.
The Flight Home En Route to Louisville Remember the laundry that hangs on bamboo fences, on the edges of corrugated tin, on the rafters next to fishing nets that clump together and billow like 18th-century petticoats. Remember the blue jeans, the yellow t-shirts, the thick-hooded sweatshirts. Remember the slender brown legs that slide into the jeans, the fat lips of the toddler who sat on your lap, the hands of the man who, while working his day job as a security guard in front of an ATM, tied the knots that made the nets. Remember the brown waters of the Mekong, the Nam Khong, the Nam Song, the heavy rains in the afternoon, the early morning mist. Remember the clear rising song of a gibbon family at dawn. Remember the Chinese rock music. The gristle and fat in the meat. Even remember the mosquitos and salmonella. Remember how to say, [...]
In 2011, Binghamton, a small industrial town in upstate New York (formerly where IBM was headquartered), was hit by a flood that ravaged the quasi-rural area. Among the casualties of the flood were MacArthur Elementary School and MacArthur Park. These photographs were taken for archival purposes by N. Henry, a social scientist and cartographer at Binghamton University. The tops of a children’s swing set and jungle gym and the rooftops of the elementary school are visible; the reflections of sky and treetops visible in the flood waters give an odd, uncanny sense of brightness, of natural calm and beauty even in a disaster that fiscally devastated most of the quasi-rural area. For me, they cross the blurry boundary between archive and art / journalism and something more transformative. If humans are the part of nature that goes against nature’s grain, it might also be said that nature is an aspect [...]
Requited: Poetry as a Truth-Telling Mechanism The effectiveness of Kristina Marie Darling’s book Requited lies in its ability to remind readers that it is human nature to crave to be what we are not. To crave what we don’t have. Darling treats poetry as a truth-telling mechanism. This is a book that is aware of itself, its truths, and how it wants to tell them. The self-referential nature of this text urges the truth to make itself known. It enables the use of poetry as a truth-telling device, and reminds the reader of fundamental truths. The book is the chronicle of a couple’s relationship, and their eventual parting. We begin the story in a garden, which might be a nod toward to the Garden of Eden, and what it symbolizes for us: a clean slate; new beginnings; fresh starts. Gardens and forests are so richly associated in Western literature with [...]
I am an unrelenting bellow In the dream I open the door. I watch her dandelion head. She is walking away. My arms catch her and I ask why. I ask where. She tells me she was going to ask where six four five street is. The numbers are a jumbled way of counting. She is too little to walk away and where is your brother. She can’t seem to tell me: he is hiding I pushed him out the boat he followed me here. I start by opening more doors to smaller spaces, using my hands, afraid of touching him if he isn’t alive. These places are impossibly small, closets packed with winter jackets. So we move into the park and I am yelling his name I am an unrelenting bellow. I say it like it’s the only word in the world. I am holding my daughter’s hand and [...]
On September 5, 2014, NPR ran an by critic Juan Vidal titled, “Where Have All the Poets Gone?” which questioned whether American poets still produce political work, and suggested that “literary [political] provocation in America is . . . at a low.” Because I find this assessment of contemporary American letters to be very incomplete, I wanted to take the opportunity to create a dialogue on the subject by curating a series of compelling political poems from contemporary American poets. I christened this series “Political Punch” as an affectionate reflection on the cocktail of poets who decided to honor me with their participation in my little Infoxicated Corner; it was intended to celebrate the glorious mix of poetics, voices, and life experiences all being shaken and stirred into a sense of community and conversation, being distilled into burning gulps of experience for the reader. Leaving aside all the boozed-up metaphors, [...]
Political Punch is officially over! Or, at least, this first installment of it is. It was both surprising and gratifying that people responded to it as they did — it went on three times longer than I had intended it to, and it generated enough interest that I could probably have kept it going for at least another three weeks, were I not beginning to feel hopelessly overextended. Though it’s definitely time for me to step away from this project, and focus my time & energy on other responsibilities for a while, I wanted to take a minute to offer my deep and happy thanks to everyone who participated in this series — by contributing work to it, reading it, talking about it, helping promote it on the internets, or quietly enjoying it through individual visits to the Infoxicated Corner over the past three weeks. It was a very fulfilling [...]
On September 5, 2014, NPR ran an by critic Juan Vidal titled, “Where Have All the Poets Gone?” which questioned whether American poets still produce political work, and suggested that “literary [political] provocation in America is . . . at a low.” Because I find this assessment of contemporary American letters to be very incomplete, I wanted to take the opportunity to create a dialogue on the subject by curating a series of compelling political poems from contemporary American poets. I christened this series “Political Punch” as an affectionate reflection on the cocktail of poets who decided to honor me with their participation in my little Infoxicated Corner; it was intended to celebrate the glorious mix of poetics, voices, and life experiences all being shaken and stirred into a sense of community and conversation, being distilled into burning gulps of experience for the reader. Leaving aside all the boozed-up metaphors, [...]
On September 5, 2014, NPR ran an by critic Juan Vidal titled, “Where Have All the Poets Gone?” which questioned whether American poets still produce political work, and suggested that “literary [political] provocation in America is . . . at a low.” Because I find this assessment of contemporary American letters to be very incomplete, I wanted to take the opportunity to create a dialogue on the subject by curating a series of compelling political poems from contemporary American poets. I christened this series “Political Punch” as an affectionate reflection on the cocktail of poets who decided to honor me with their participation in my little Infoxicated Corner; it was intended to celebrate the glorious mix of poetics, voices, and life experiences all being shaken and stirred into a sense of community and conversation, being distilled into burning gulps of experience for the reader. Leaving aside all the boozed-up metaphors, [...]
On September 5, 2014, NPR ran an by critic Juan Vidal titled, “Where Have All the Poets Gone?” which questioned whether American poets still produce political work, and suggested that “literary [political] provocation in America is . . . at a low.” Because I find this assessment of contemporary American letters to be very incomplete, I wanted to take the opportunity to create a dialogue on the subject by curating a series of compelling political poems from contemporary American poets. I christened this series “Political Punch” as an affectionate reflection on the cocktail of poets who decided to honor me with their participation in my little Infoxicated Corner; it was intended to celebrate the glorious mix of poetics, voices, and life experiences all being shaken and stirred into a sense of community and conversation, being distilled into burning gulps of experience for the reader. Leaving aside all the boozed-up metaphors, [...]
On September 5, 2014, NPR ran an by critic Juan Vidal titled, “Where Have All the Poets Gone?” which questioned whether American poets still produce political work, and suggested that “literary [political] provocation in America is . . . at a low.” Because I find this assessment of contemporary American letters to be very incomplete, I wanted to take the opportunity to create a dialogue on the subject by curating a series of compelling political poems from contemporary American poets. I christened this series “Political Punch” as an affectionate reflection on the cocktail of poets who decided to honor me with their participation in my little Infoxicated Corner; it was intended to celebrate the glorious mix of poetics, voices, and life experiences all being shaken and stirred into a sense of community and conversation, being distilled into burning gulps of experience for the reader. Leaving aside all the boozed-up metaphors, [...]
On September 5, 2014, NPR ran an by critic Juan Vidal titled, “Where Have All the Poets Gone?” which questioned whether American poets still produce political work, and suggested that “literary [political] provocation in America is . . . at a low.” Because I find this assessment of contemporary American letters to be very incomplete, I wanted to take the opportunity to create a dialogue on the subject by curating a series of compelling political poems from contemporary American poets. I christened this series “Political Punch” as an affectionate reflection on the cocktail of poets who decided to honor me with their participation in my little Infoxicated Corner; it was intended to celebrate the glorious mix of poetics, voices, and life experiences all being shaken and stirred into a sense of community and conversation, being distilled into burning gulps of experience for the reader. Leaving aside all the boozed-up metaphors, [...]
On September 5, 2014, NPR ran an by critic Juan Vidal titled, “Where Have All the Poets Gone?” which questioned whether American poets still produce political work, and suggested that “literary [political] provocation in America is . . . at a low.” Because I find this assessment of contemporary American letters to be very incomplete, I wanted to take the opportunity to create a dialogue on the subject by curating a series of compelling political poems from contemporary American poets. I christened this series “Political Punch” as an affectionate reflection on the cocktail of poets who decided to honor me with their participation in my little Infoxicated Corner; it was intended to celebrate the glorious mix of poetics, voices, and life experiences all being shaken and stirred into a sense of community and conversation, being distilled into burning gulps of experience for the reader. Leaving aside all the boozed-up metaphors, [...]