The opening poem in Swan’s Dandelion lets us join a person (we assume it is the author) in a canoe with a friend. The two lament the death of the friend’s son. Geese are flying so low their bodies are mirrored in the lake. One senses the violence of the movement as one also experiences the cutting expanse of grief that seems to spread across the lake. The poem forecasts a sober collection, despite the book’s bucolic title.
Read MoreDutton is out to give us the American prairie, or what remains of it; climate catastrophe is never far in these pages, the first piece in the collection being set during the hottest week in recorded history
Read MoreA more conventional film would have stayed grounded in straight psychological realism, taking the viewer into Maddy and Owen’s world... But worlds are permeable in I Saw the TV Glow...
Read MoreIf we are operating... in an absence of institutional and societal truth and reconciliation.... then all we have to sit with in the end is art, no matter what form it takes.
Read MoreThroughout the book, Nicorvo offers multiple takes on the title’s meaning: It is, most literally, what is stamped on the copy he receives of the crime report of his mother’s rape. But it is also a way to talk about the nature of memoir-writing, how one has no choice but to accept that “a story, any story, even a true story, can only ever be a copy.”
Read MoreThis poem is an excellent example of the way language can hover over singular moments of our lives and recall the unique intensity, the intimacy and wonder, that made our humanity meaningful…
Read MoreOrigin Story is wonderfully complex and explosive, and while it resists a fairytale ending, it offers something better than closure. It offers hope and a glimpse of how things ought to be.
Read MoreMajor Jackson's collected poems represent a much-anticipated achievement for the poet and to the faithful followers of his poetry, lectures, and his new podcast. For readers new to his work, this volume offers an opportunity to become familiar with the poet's finest.
Read MoreEnvironmental progress arises from the momentum of mass movements, and from the bedrock of science and research. Yet it is difficult to find that which supposedly springs eternal. The diverse composition of Forces of Nature points to something more palpable than hope: the continued evolution of human understanding of the interdependencies of all life.
Read MoreSince the dawn of book hauls on YouTube and its new successor, BookTok, many readers face great pressure to outpace their peers in books consumed. But does this unspoken competition actually drive literacy or foster a love of reading? Joseph O’Day doesn’t think so.
Read MoreIn a brief, yet indelible piece, Nancy Barnes explores the relationships seen and invisible that shift between people and their stuff. We are often defined by what we possess, but what becomes of our belongings when they breach the plain category of stuff and settle inside of us like heart and soul?
Read MoreLabeled as a “queer multimedia music zine”, this addition to Soundings showcases the interactions between the self, music, and expression. Ari Koontz takes us on a journey of identity and personality through the lens of a bespoke, rustic, album.
Read MoreRicardo Edwards is a Jamaican-born surrealist oil painter who deals in Black pride, beauty, and glamor. His works are steeped in Afro-Caribbean culture and aesthetic. But lurking beneath the bright tropical colors, an eerie sense crawls. Unhinged. Unflinching. and unyielding.
Read MoreThe life of Rafael Pinto, a Jewish apothecary addicted to his own wares in Sarajevo, is turned upside down with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the event that sparked World War I. Pinto is conscripted, and while in reluctant service as a medic, he meets Osman, a fellow soldier and a Muslim, whose smile and stories charm everyone he meets, including Pinto.
Read MoreIn just 250 pages, Other Names for Love is at once an intimate coming-of-age story, a family saga, and a social novel, capturing the tense, sometimes tragic, interplay of personal desires, familial duties, and social transformation.
Read MoreLong before we realize Luca and Alberto can't swim at the beach, we are half-shown the sleek length of the first creature, the sparkle of the lanterns on the scales as it arcs over the skiff. We claimed all the fish movies ages before the fisherman with his harpoon had time to stammer, What a monster! Horrifying! The gramophone sinks to the seafloor and becomes ours, along with every other treasure. Ariel, longing for legs, longing for her voice. Ursula glammed up in Divine's makeup. Protect the children, they screech, driving us to the cave with their tridents or scribbling over our outlines with (frankly bodacious) tentacles. The more the merrier when it comes to appendages.
Read MoreMICHAEL POGACH (he/him) is the author of the award-nominated Rafael Ward series: The Spider in the Laurel (2018 Kindle Book Award finalist), The Long Oblivion (2019 Kindle Book Award semi-finalist), The Tyrant Gods, and The Hidden Empire, as well as the chapbook Zero to Sixty. I (Abigail Michelini, Poetry Editor at ORP) had the privilege of speaking with Michael in September 2022 about his newest book, Slip. In the interview below, Michael shares with us his process of finding his way through the “swamp of writing” and the ways in which his characters both reflect his life and surprise him with their demands.
Read MoreChallenging norms and convention feel like an instinct for our millennium generation. Amy Tan (1952 — ) tells heartfelt stories in the first person point of view of four pairs of Chinese mothers and Chinese American daughters during and after WWII in China and the US, investigating the value of family legacy and memories within the scope of an era's history.
Read MoreWayne Miller doesn’t hesitate to probe our insecurities and hopes, but more precisely our assumptions about what we think we understand about our present America in his new book of poetry published by Milkweed Press, We the Jury.
Read MoreKirschner’s work forces us to struggle on multiple levels—with the sentences, with the stories, with our own expectations. I felt like Jacob wrestling the angel by the end of it—bruised and blessed.
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