Cover Letter
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Poet Marc Petersen sent this astounding cover letter along with his most recent submission, a poem from which, “Like Blood” appears in our Winter 2014 issue. More
Nice Guys Finish Last…Unless You’re Reading
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The first book that ever obsessed me, that changed my reading life, was ‘Nice Guys Finish Last’ by Leo Durocher. I was 12 when I purchased it with birthday money, from a bookstore in Rochester, New York, where I grew up. What first caught my eye was its bright yellow cover, which reminded me of… More
San Pedro River Review Spring issue is almost here!
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San Pedro River Review is a semi-annual print journal of poetry and art. More
Imaging Figures #3
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To save our personhood is to dispossess ourselves of what we thought we knew of it, so that aiming our desire–our re-schooled longing–at dispossession, we liberate objects and world from our engorgement. More
Sandra Marchetti’s The Canopy, a Review
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Kirsten Clodfelter reviews Sandra Marchetti’s “The Canopy” More
Imaging Figures: #2
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If Woolf points, in “Walter Sickert” (1934), to the reciprocal stewardship of persons and things, adumbrating how the one can only be the custodian of the other, what manner of seeing structures the import of custodial care? We are meant, I think, to interpret care not in the penitentiary sense, not as though the two… More
Imaging Figures: #1
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Each day I attach less value to the intellect. Each day I realize more clearly that only away from it can the writer possess something of our past impressions, that is attain to something of himself and to the one subject matter of art. What the intellect gives us back under the name of the… More
You Can Find Goodness Inside of Sadness, and Poems When None are Coming
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Anyone who has done a poetry workshop has probably done this exercise. You read a chapter of fiction, a newsletter, anything. You pull out words from the writing and make a poem. More
Guide to the Guides: Making Shapely Fiction
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Ian McCaul examines Jerome Stern’s “Making Shapely Fiction.” More
Reading King Lear by William Shakespeare
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I hadn’t read Shakespeare since college before picking up Lear again this summer. Certainly, I’d never read Shakespeare as a writer. And I confess, as a fiction writer who hasn’t read many plays at all since college, I didn’t, at first, know quite what to make of it. More
Walden Deck
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“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living… More
Keeping Watch: Chapter Roundings
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When we pause to consider what a tiny fraction of our evolutionary history has been taken up by our post-farming existence, it becomes blindingly obvious that our biological make-up was formed almost entirely before farming… More
Guide to the Guides: The Art of Fiction
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Writers are fascinated with the thoughts and habits of other writers because deep down we’re really looking for a secret to make our jobs less awful. More
Things I Wish I Could Do In Summer
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It’s summer. I should have time to read all the books I’m never going to get to read in 5 summers. It makes me wish to be a kid again – sort of. Here are some of the books I have that I’m not reading… More
Book 6 of 100—Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman
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I’ve been surprised to learn that (at least until I discovered Grey’s Anatomy is on Netflix) finding time to read while caring for a newborn (especially while breastfeeding) has been super easy. But time for review writing? Well, not so much. Case in point: I finished this Atwood novel more than two weeks ago. Still,… More
And the Winner Isn’t …
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As most of you have surely heard by now, the Pulitzer Prize winner’s list for 2012 was announced mid-April, but no winner was selected from among the three finalists for the fiction category. The finalists included Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, Swamplandia! by Karen Russell (read my review here ), and The Pale King by… More
Book 5 of 100—Tom Rachman, The Imperfectionists
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Okay, I had to take a little time out from reading and writing book reviews to get a few final things in order and then have a baby, but now I’m back with some thoughts on Tom Rachman’s really stellar book and, hopefully in the next day or two (if I can successfully take advantage… More
Book 4 of 100—Alexandra Fuller, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
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Book 4 of 100 Alexandra Fuller, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight It’s taken me awhile to write this review. I wanted some time to reflect on this memoir before commenting on it. In this book, Alexandra Fuller (“Bobo,” as she’s called throughout her childhood), recounts her experiences of growing up in South Africa… More
Book 3 of 100—Lorrie Moore, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?
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Book 3 of 100 Lorrie Moore, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? Moore’s slim novel took me two tries. I sat down some number of months ago and read the first eight pages of Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, the book’s opening section. It felt too dense and disconnected—I couldn’t find anything to grasp… More
Book 2 of 100–Kathryn Stockett, The Help
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Book 2 of 100 Kathryn Stockett, The Help I’m happy to report that so far I’m about two-and-a-half times as fast at reading than I am at reviewing. : ) Stockett’s novel chronicles the lives of several southern women in the early 1960’s: Black maids caring for white children and families, as well as a… More