• Dear— (II)

    Donika Kelly

    Summer 2020


    I take the first snowfall for ash. Mistake,
    I mean, the first flake that comes wisping
    down for the remnant of some thing burned,
    perhaps, for warmth or in error. When we were
    young, we stood with our backs not to the past
    or future but toward the hot desperation
    of being alive and for right now.

    Donika Kelly is the author of Bestiary (Graywolf 2016), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award. She teaches at St. Bonaventure University.

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    Wilderness in the Mouth: On Vievee Francis

    Phillip B. Williams

    From the very beginning, Vievee Francis has sung to us throughout her entire oeuvre, and to the best of my abilities I have tried to describe the various ways she has rendered song for us in order that truth, in all its grotesqueness and generosity, may be coupled with beauty, in all of its doubtful confidence and allure.

    #45 - Jesse Lee Kercheval

    Jesse Lee Kercheval

    “How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?” Julia Child said, and my mother agreed. She bought frozen Pepperidge hard rolls and baked them in the oven, trying to duplicate the brittle crust, the taste of real bread. Now, I found myself thinking of her every time I weighed the risks of going into a store just for a fresh baguette.

    The Steadfast Attention of Sigrid Nunez

    Tara K. Menon

    In Nunez’s vision of the world, writers are like ballerinas: willing to torture themselves for the beauty of truth. The difficulty of communicating our feelings to others is a source of much suffering. The best we can do, Nunez’s novels argue, is to pay tender attention.

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