Nonfiction
Coming To: A Lexicology of Fainting
1. vein From Old French veine, from Latin vena. The earliest senses were blood vessel and small natural underground channel of water. See also: blood, artery, channel, the channeling of the dead. It’s a wake, we are told, my cousin and I, but we hear it like one word: awake. Who is doing the waking? …
Eleven Stories of Water and Stone
Winner of the 2014 Prairie Schooner Summer Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest, selected by judge Judith Ortiz Cofer The aim of water treatment is to produce and maintain water that is hygienically safe, aesthetically attractive and palatable, in an economic manner. Manual of Water Supply and Treatment, Ministry of Urban Development, New Delhi, India 1. Maybe …
Alicia Ostriker. The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog. University of Pittsburgh Press.
In her new collection The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog, Alicia Suskin Ostriker brings together a trio of voices—each a living thing, each mortal and yet calling out its truths in a clear tenor. These three voices, extraordinary in their ordinariness, build conversations that whirl around each topic. They catch angles of consideration …
Call My Name
When I was seven, my sea captain father at sea, my mother a strobing lighthouse of missing, I stood alone in my bedroom, renaming all my toys Melissa. You, and you, and you. A child’s narcissism, maybe. A punishment for my dolls. I didn’t choose my name, but I could choose to give it away. …
Review: Afaa Michael Weaver. The Government of Nature. University of Pittsburgh Press.
At the end of his poem ‘‘The Impossible,’’ a poem that unflinchingly recounts a memory of sexual abuse, Bruce Weigl writes, ‘‘Say it clearly and you make it beautiful, no matter what.’’ I’ve always had a contentious relationship with this line—feeling both its truth and its impossibility at the same time, and, of course, that’s …
On War Writing: A Roundtable Discussion with Donald Anderson, Doug Anderson, Matt Gallagher, Sam Hamill, Peter Molin, Marilyn Nelson, and Stacey Peebles
Gathered here around a virtual table is an eclectic assembly of thinkers who offer their responses to a series of questions and issues connected to the literature of war. DON A: Donald Anderson / DOUG A: Doug Anderson / MG: Matt Gallagher / SH: Sam Hamill / PM: Peter Molin / MN: Marilyn Nelson / SP: Stacey …
A Walking Guide to the Heart of a City
In Nazareth an excavation of the ancient city lies underneath the ground. One can walk some of the old streets on Plexiglas platforms or descend into the ruins. Just outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem excavations commence in the Arab town of Silwan, believed now to be the actual ancient city of David, …
Paradise in Zurita: An Interview with Raúl Zurita
I can tell you that Raúl Zurita was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1950. That he studied engineering, then became a poet. That his early works were poignant responses to Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 military coup. That he was arrested at six in the morning on September 11, 1973, and beaten. That he was a founding member of …
Election Supervisor, Bosnia
I don’t remember the name of the city or who was shooting at whom. Instead, I see the shimmer of the toilet bowl, its pearl-like shine. Eighteen years after the fact, I’m still on the floor trying to curl my shoulders behind white porcelain. A foreign correspondent once told me that bathrooms are the safe …