Author: Roxane Gay

Nectar by Lisa Bellamy (A Review by P. Jonas Bekker)

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Encircle Press

24 pgs/$12.95

 

I staggered out of the theater after Waiting for Godot.
Jeez, I griped to Peter, That’s it? We’re all just wind and gristle?
Yep, he said after a minute, and I knew he was trying to remember
whether he’d stuck the parking ticket in his wallet or pocket.

I love it when a poet tells you what a poetry collection is all about in the first poem. In these four lines from the opening poem, ‘Monkey Spinning a Prayer Wheel’, Lisa Bellamy lays out a framework of what she’s concerning herself with in this chapbook called Nectar. The senselessness and mundanity of everything makes the protagonist call for her mother like a little girl:

 in my memory of chipping my tooth on the granite rock in our backyard,
and me wailing as my mother ran from her chaise lounge
where she’d been sunbathing and reading Leon Uris, her freckled arms
and the smell of her suntan oil—where is she? Where is she?

That is a powerful, if disconcerting, start to a book of poetry. Continue reading →

If You Take Me With You: Massive Goddamned Roundup

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There is, of course, a new issue of PANK with writing by Lisa Fink, Lisa Ahn, Ian Brown, Melissa Yancy, Maria Elvira Vera Tata, Ashley Bethard, Tyler Sage, Hedy Zimra, Kimberly Ann Southwick, Danielle Sellers, Glen Pourciau, Wendy C. Ortiz, Hazel Foster, Carina Finn, Blaze Dzikowski, Dana Diehl, Thomas Busillo, Zach Buscher, Kelly Bright Leidenthal, Richard Bentley, and Anne Barngrover.

JMWW features writing by Barry Graham and many others.

Kill Author Eighteen includes Jenn Marie Nunes, John Mortara, Joseph A.W. Quintela, Matthew Burnside, Meghan Lamb, Sara Crowley, and others.

Book news: Keith Nathan Brown’s Embodied is available from Sententia Books and Sandra Simonds has a new book of poetry, Mother Was a Tragic Girl, out from Cleveland State University Press. Ansley Moon has a chapbook forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. Ryan Bradley’s Code For Failure is also now out. Stefanie Freele’s Surrounded by Water will be released by Press 53 in May. Tania Hershman’s My Mother Was an Upright Piano is available from Tangent Books. Continue reading →

A Forsley Feuilleton: They Are Two Different Games But In The End They Are The Same

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“There goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was in this game” – that’s what the protagonist of Bernard Malamud’s The Natural wanted people to say when he walked down the street.  And they would have.  He was a baseball prodigy, a natural – ‘The Natural.’ Even before joining The Show, he struck out Walter ‘The Wammer’ Whambold – who Malamud modeled on Babe ‘The Great Bambino’ Ruth – with three pitches.  But then, because of those three pitches, a Bird in black, who was obsessed with killing the best there ever was in the game, changes her plans of shooting ‘The Wammer’ and instead shoots ‘The Natural.’  In Hobbs own words, “My life didn’t turn out the way I expected.” But his life expectations were off base from the start, so it took him over a decade to recover from the gunshot wound and finally get to The Show and on base.

Continue reading →

Ask The Author: Jennifer Pieroni

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From January, “Life on the Dead Tree” by Jennifer Pieroni. Jennifer answers questions about climbing, eating, editing, rapping, and witnessing.

1. When was the last time you climbed? How high was it and what did you see?

I don’t climb anything. I’ve become afraid of heights, and this was unanticipated, and I’m not proud of it. I envy children. Typically they can’t be bothered with those worries. So, the last time I “climbed?” A hilltop rock overlooking Gloucester harbor a frightening distance below. That was yesterday.

2. What don’t you eat?

My hunger knows no bounds. Except bugs. I won’t eat those. And I’m practicing portion control. So, there’s that. I also try not to eat things that aren’t from nature. But I have many exceptions to this rule, so it’s kind of a joke. Children are completely irrational about food though. It’s neverendlingly interesting to watch them pick and choose what they’ll eat on the day-to-day.

3. How has being an editor for so long affected your writing style?

I’m not sure it has. A few of the writers we published were (and are) doing work that really resonates for me. Some of them I keep in touch with and those friendships have been really helpful. You need people to keep you in the game. That was the great takeaway for me. Many new inspiring friends. Continue reading →

This Modern Writer: Gator, Florida by Vanessa Blakeslee

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It’s autumn in central Florida. This year, summer’s heavy humidity and torrential thunderstorms stretched throughout September without respite, but at last, the trees across from your condo have turned a dusty pink. The clouds blow over, bestowing one perfect day after another—temperatures in the low eighties and seventies, blue sky and breezes capable of tricking you to think you’re somewhere in the Hawaiian islands, or the Caribbean. This is why you live here, of course, in this quirky, crowded, southernmost state. Weather might not matter much to some. But after a childhood of dark, frigid mornings awaiting the school bus, you drink up the sunshine, all three hundred days a year of it. To you, living in the ice and dim winter light is like being hungry, when all you can think of is food. And warmth.

Sunshine is life.

To celebrate the change of seasons, you and two Floridian friends decide to take your boyfriend, Frank, a recent Yankee transplant, on a kayak adventure. One Saturday morning, you drive from your neighborhood in Maitland, the upper-middle class suburb on the northern fringe of Orange County, thirty minutes to Wekiva Springs. You’re not the outdoorsy type, but a canoe or kayak trip on the Wekiva River is almost a rite-of-passage for those who have only previously known Orlando through its theme parks and strip malls. The sounds of the roadway fade as you step out of your jeep at the kayak rental site—a bungalow in a clearing, a few dozen yards from the riverbank. A woman in a loose t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up and biceps as big as your thighs charges across the yard behind a push-mower. She cuts the engine, approaches. This is the real Florida, you impress upon your boyfriend.

The woman exchanges hearty handshakes with the four of you, introduces herself as Martha. Continue reading →

Little Red Riding Hood Missed the Bus by Kristin Abraham (A Review by J. A. Tyler)

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What follows is the first in J. A. Tyler’s full-press of Subito Press, a series of reviews appearing at [PANK] over the course of 2012, covering every title available from Subito. J. A. Tyler’s previous full-press series have appeared at Big Other (full-press of Calamari Press) and at Mud Luscious Press’s online quarterly (full-press of Publishing Genius Press).

As Subito Press’s first competition winner in poetry, Kristin Abraham’s Little Red Riding Hood Missed the Bus sets the bar extremely high for future volumes, tangling the standard versions of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ around contemporary culture and through surreal landscapes to form a poetry collection of ghosts and blood and snow, a re-envisioned and re-invigorated fairy tale.

Little Red Riding Hood Missed the Bus is a pocket-sized, matte volume, slim and beautifully designed by David Stadler. And the physical sensibilities of the book – minimal, simplistic, straight-forward – are in wonderful contrast with Abraham’s poetry, which is sprawling and dense, thick-blooded and expansive. This ripe juxtaposition in the production of Little Red Riding Hood Missed the Bus is an excellent way into a book that thrives on contrast. Continue reading →

Names: Beer, Food, Literature — "There's not a better current term, dammit"

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I’m going to talk about names: beer names, food names, genre names. I’m going to talk about names, and I’m not going to mention that quote you’re thinking of right now [1]. But I will talk about beer, food, and literature.

What are names supposed to do? They’re supposed to let us know what we’re talking about, in a broad sense [2]. They’re arbitrary, as is any other word, and as with other words, names change with language and dialect and situation (though probably more slowly). People are more likely to have an emotional investment in a name than in a non-name word. . . names come to represent (rather than just indicating) a place or person or concept. Or drink. Sometimes, people get cranky about names. In most cases, people don’t seem to object to established names, but controversy sometimes arises with new or changed names [3]. There are four broad categories into which those controversies fall: adequacy of names, accuracy of names, origin of names, and intent of names. Does the name do what it needs to do? Is it appropriate? Where’s it come from? Why is it?

(Here are my biases: I find names, their etymologies and histories and meanings, fascinating [4], but I find names themselves difficult to remember, unless I’ve known someone or something for a while.)

Continue reading →

the unfirm line – Grandaddy

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“Yeah is what we had, no we never knew
Good, good is what we understood”
Grandaddy, Yeah is what we had

I help raise two children. They are young now, and I try to teach them the basics: manners, kindness, goodness. I strive to help them understand what “good” means to them, what it can mean to others.

There is an episode of Backyardigans from which I have stolen our family motto “We are rough and tough and good.”

It is a start for the young kids, a start where I want to linger.

No Award for 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; Franzen Seethes

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At least Franzen didn't win.

 

On my way home from work, I said to myself, “I’m not going to write about this. I don’t care.” Welp–

As you probably know, the winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize For Fiction was “No Award,” written by N.O. Novelist. It’s been 34 years since the 18 member Pulitzer Board last failed to bestow the prize to a work of fiction and, to my surprise, it’s the ninth such incident since the Prize began in 1918, according to January Magazine. Continue reading →

Ask The Author: Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes

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In February, this wonderful piece of fiction from Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes, “The Lights.”

1. Why did you choose to write “The Lights” in second person?

This started as an exercise from Noah Eli Gordon based on Eula Biss’s essay “Time and Distance Overcome.” I picked an object and researched it and let the research take me where it wanted to go. I picked traffic lights because I can be boring and read a lot about naked streets, which are just as exciting as they sound. I feel like traffic lights speak in the second person. They tell us what to do in command form through their colors. The voice and the lights expanded from there.

2. Should cakes be abolished due to the laziness we have about using them to celebrate any occasion?

I’m definitely pro-cakes but I think that they should be eaten in silence and alone.

3. How could you use “The Lights” in a corporate team builder?

Thank you for asking this. I think it’s actually the most practical and direct use for “The Lights”. I’m always looking for a use for these things. I should probably patent it and hold workshops. I can’t tell you how I would use it because of the patent. Continue reading →