Matthew Shenoda
Damming the Nile: A Poet’s Ecology
The Nile has always been the beginning and the end of all things.Baher Kamal What happens to a person when displaced from their place of origin? At the core of diasporic understanding is the separation of people from their land. Culture and its material symbols can sometimes be emulated, carried, and reinvented from place to …
Oil and Myrrh
How she’d never hear the sound of her own humming There would be musicmade only from machinesthe monotone piercingan electronic originationnot from the hands of humansor the skins of animals In the name of the Father We tell ourselves differentlybut there are only two worlds She could not take the same breath we taketo recreate …
Anis Shivani. Against the Workshop: Provocations, Polemics, Controversies. Texas Review Press.
Against the Workshop: Provocations, Polemics, Controversies, a book of critical essays by writer Anis Shivani, unabashedly tackles one of the central foundations of contemporary American literature: the creative writing program. Shivani critiques this literary mainstay that has so permeated the life of American writers that at times it seems absolutely unavoidable. Very little criticism exists …