A PUNK RECORD FOR THE DISENCHANTED
Poet and journalist Mark McConville reviews Miss Vincent’s album A Funeral For Youth
A thick darkness shrouds out the light and the whole world shudders in pain. Every sinew of grace has diminished, and all lasting hope screams out for closure. We all stare into the void these days, looking for answers to our questions, but receive only disjointed responses. In music we trust though, and punk rock doesn’t teeter on the line here, it actually blooms naturally, and Southampton band Miss Vincent, shudder like this world, not in pain, but in excitement for what’s coming. The act, do not fester like old fruit, as they have created an album dark in subject and one that tackles oblivion from the onset.
“STAND UP” AS FICTION
Poet James B. Nicola reviews Douglas Fergus’s Small Portions Café: A Tempting Assortment of Stories, Lucky Doug Press, 2021
How does a writer keep you on board for the ride? And a fiction writer, at that, when his story isn't even supposed to be true? And a humorist—how does he make you laugh? In the Ken Burns series on Mark Twain, undisputed master of both fiction and fun, one commentator says that even academics with graduate degrees cannot tell us quite how Twain did what he did, and does still; his technique has defied analysis for generations.
THE RIGHT TO BEAUTY
Writer and college student Alicia Manno reviews the costume design in Gregory Doran’s Hamlet, from the The Royal Shakespeare Company and presented on screen by BBC, 2008
As friends and family who know me too well are aware, I consider myself something of a fashion history fanatic, scouring the internet daily for scathing reviews of Disney princess costume design and lively discourse on nineteenth-century corsetry. So imagine my horror when at 49 minutes and 5 seconds in the 2009 Gregory Doran adaptation of Hamlet, a chummy Guildenstern appears on screen in a sturdy pair of light wash bootcut jeans, exchanging forced laughs with his faithful compadre Rosencrantz, who has been expertly clad in a brown leather jacket.
MY SLICE ON THE SNYDER CUT
Writer, editor, cartoonist, and spoken word artist Bob McNeil shares his two cents on the hotly debated super hero flick Zack Snyder's Justice League, from Warner Brothers, 2021
Probably due to my age, I put all expectations for Snyder's Justice League film in the basement. Not being an admirer of superhero movies, my girlfriend did not foresee an entertaining experience either. Even still, we decided to see it on HBO Max.
Both she and I were aware of the oft-told backstories of Diana Prince, Clark Kent, and Bruce Wayne. Comparatively speaking, Barry Allen's origins never ran across our minds. Quicker than a three-card monte dealer, the director hid his origins. Amid the movie, my girlfriend asked how Central City’s fastest guy got his powers. I could not answer. Confronting our ignorance, we turned to Wiki. Given the effort, we wondered why a superhero tale required the concentration of a homework assignment.
Martian Manhunter suffered from the same star-far and opaque treatment. Other than his name, the film did not tell us much about him. His ability to transform his appearance never cleared up some major questions about his beginnings. Grudgingly once again, my girlfriend and I agreed that the film required an Instructor's Edition. Somewhere on the pages, all the answers awaited us.
THE DOOR TO MEMORIES
Writer and editor Alexa Josaphouitch reviews Brandi Spering’s This I Can Tell You from Perennial Press, 2021
Brandi Spering’s This I Can Tell You is a poetic exploration of memory and grief that also considers time’s influences on them. She recounts growing up in South Philadelphia as her parents establish a routine of separation and reunion, without much explanation of either stage to her or her siblings. She attempts to understand how this affected her relationship with her father especially after his murder.
AN AMERICAN FEVER DREAM
Writer, New Yorker, and major cinephile Sarah Marjorie Lyon reviews Give Me Liberty, from Flux Capacitor Studios, 2019
The day is chaotic from its very start. “деда, wake up,” Vic mumbles at the crack of dawn, before embarking on the difficult task of getting his senile grandfather ready for a funeral. This old man is a relic from a faraway time and place, muttering Russian war songs and bludgeoning a raw chicken with a dumbbell in an explosion of manic confusion--all before breakfast.
SOME NOTES ON ENCHANTMENT
Critic Ben Lewellyn-Taylor shares thoughts and cultural commentary from A24’s The Lighthouse
To write of whiteness is to write of white supremacy. One cannot invoke the former without the latter: the false light from its source.
The continued use of black and white technology in film is an artistic choice, though one that rarely serves to draw attention to constructs of race.
That is, until The Lighthouse, Robert Eggers’ 2019 film about two lighthouse keepers who antagonize one another during their month-long stint on an otherwise deserted island.
BEYOND THIS REALM
Poet Kika Man reviews JinJin Xu’s hybrid poetry There Is Still Singing in the Afterlife from Radix Media, 2020
JinJin Xu is a film maker who teaches hybrid ballet/poetry workshops, Xu is also a poet combining all of the former in her work. Throughout There Is Still Singing in the Afterlife, she looks for ways to go beyond the red dust, to transcend the earthly plain of our lives. Xu’s debut chapbook carries itself with an elegance people would expect upon thinking about qipao’s, something Xu is no stranger to. She puts it on and engulfs readers in “opium highs” and “emerald lamps perfume”.
From the beginning, Xu allows the reader to come up close and intimate, integrating matters of life, of the body, and matters transcending what is around us. In “There They Are,” the opening poem of the collection, she introduces her family, who are central to everything that follows. Family is something permeating everything, family is a part of history – historical and personal – and growing up is inevitable in Xu’s work. The line that keeps resonating in my head – “dew on the page” – seems to be the best comparison to the kinds of mists and perfumes Xu leaves us wandering in, and each of her lines unfolds multiple meaning: “When I say words out loud they become real,” she writes in “To Red Dust.” Thus, it is sometimes hard to grasp what is happening, but the intimacy and closeness allow for glimpses of personal narratives and bring the reader home to a world with a history spanning centuries.
HANDS ALL RED
A review from writer and cartoonist KM Bezner about the bold brutality in Katie Skelly’s Maids from Fantagraphics, 2020
Katie Skelly’s latest outstanding horror comic Maids opens with a gory promise to its readers: keep reading to discover whose bloody eyeball is rolling across the floor. Although, if you’re a true crime fan you may already know the answer: Maids is based on the story of Christine and Léa Papin, two sisters working as servants in a wealthy household who in 1933 butchered their employer Léonie Lancelin and her daughter Genevieve. But even if you’re already familiar with the case, which sparked debates over class conflict and criminal accountability in early 20th century France, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by Skelly’s fantastic retelling that somehow makes this creepy story even creepier.
THE WIND WE HAVE SOWN
Writer Ray Marsocci reviews Susan Kay Anderson’s Please Plant This Book Coast to Coast from Finishing Line Press, 2021
The summer before I turned twenty-one, in 1981, was my last carrying a “rucksack” filled with more books than clothes. That was ‘“Zen” writer’ of me, I thought, as was how I hitchhiked, “traveling” with the wind. I admired the wind’s absence, its presence, its indifference to me. I yearned to go where the wind would go, in all its palimpsest impunity, so long as it was willing that I went along, that I might follow. I hoped the wind would help me “Zen” the stories spiriting through me. That 1981 summer was Reagan’s first as president, so when the wind went to Galilee and up onto the Block Island ferry, I went on board too, with humbling ‘“Zen” confidence’ the wind wanted me out there, on the Atlantic.
TINDER REVIEW FROM A PAST HETEROSEXUAL SELF
College student Sarah Elda reveals her thoughts on the popular dating app, Tinder, where many have met, but few have fallen in love.
The Tinder app, launched in 2012 by start-up Hatch Labs, is available in over 190 countries and free to download on IOS, Android, or by visiting Tinder.com. It took the spot on the Top Five Utilized Web Services in 2013, becoming the first new online dating app to do so in ten years. Signing up is painless and convenient.
WADING THROUGH THE WATERS
B. D. Navarre Reviews of A Child of Many Waters by Erin Lierl Published by Lavender Ink
Expansive and vibrantly metaphysical, A Child of Many Waters offers beautifully-woven metaphors as we follow Erin Lierl on concurrent physical and philosophical voyages across the world and the spiritual undercurrents bubbling beneath its surface. Lierl begins her journey not at “the end of things, [nor] the beginning of things” but some transitory place within a
DECONSTRUCTING HUNTER AND PREY BINARIES
Editor & Writer Amanda Schroeder reviews Hunting Season from Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2020
“At times, the film will lapse into the landscape of a fable. At times you are asked to shut your eyes and focus only on sounds. I hope this causes you some discomfort,” writes Julia Brennan in her debut novel Hunting Season published by Tarpaulin Sky Press. The novel takes the form of a film journal that quickly coalesces into a brutally honest depiction of trauma from the eyes of a survivor endeavoring to take the role of a passive observer.
TRUE BELIEVER AND MI ABUELA, QUEEN OF NIGHT- MARES
Writer & Critic Alex Carrigan Reviews Two Plays from Table Work Press, 2020
Table Work Press, a publisher of new plays with the purpose of “to forward the act of reading as a valid and deeply valuable avenue for engaging with the theatre,” recently released their newest anthology, entitled Two Plays: True Believer and Mi Abuela, Queen of Nightmres. The collection takes new plays from playwrights Justice Hehir and Christine Sloan Stoddard that seem completely dissimilar to one another, but when read together, highlights many similar themes about womanhood, female bodily autonomy, violence and culture.
IMPACTS OF LOVE, HONOR, AND SACRIFICE
Writer Katherine Barker reviews Andrew Lam’s Repentance, from Tiny Fox Press, 2019
Long after the battles have been fought, when the smoke has faded and the ringing of gun shots are stripped away. When the survivors make their way back to familiar soil, what remains of World War II and the stories of those who were involved in the unfolding of history? In a search for answers to these questions, Daniel Tokunaga discovers that the truth to the past is not always on the surface -- sometimes you have to dig a little deeper and have a little faith in the people around you.
I’VE GOT YOU
Kelly Reichardt’s film First Cow from A24, 2020 reviewed by college teacher Maurice Rodriguez
! May Contain Spoilers !
It’s like watching what a hug feels like. Do you remember those? In a world now fraught with proximity to others, this simple act of embracing another feels more essential than ever, and it’s not often that you watch an American frontier film or pick up one of those old dime novels and feel an emitting warmness. However, that’s the sensation Kelly Reichardt’s film First Cow (2020) produces—a much needed embrace and recognition of our shared condition—of being a human being.
DOWN FOR THE COUNT
Author Michael Washburn reviews Alexander Lernet-Holenia’s Count Luna from New Directions Press, 2020
The influence of Dracula on both popular and literary culture goes on and on. There are tons of awful movies out there, and many novels not worth mentioning, but every so often, a book comes along that’s a true wonder. It glimmers with a unique identity while leaving little doubt as to its thematic pedigree. One such work is the Austrian poet Alexander Lernet-Holenia’s short 1955 novel Count Luna, which New Directions has released in a fine translation by Jane B. Greene. Here is a novel that upends convention, telling the tale of a count
MISTRESS PERPETRATOR
The Bait-and-Switch of Male Guilt in Lena Andersson’s Acts of Infidelity from Other Press, 2019 by Poet Nicole Yurcaba
In Lena Andersson’s emotionally-charged novel Acts of Infidelity, readers follow the tormented relationship of Ester Nilsson—translator, prolific writer, and poet, and Olof Sten—erratic actor extraordinaire and womanizer-in-denial as it consumes three years of their lives and snuffs out with a single text message sent from Ester to Olof’s wife, Ebba. In poignant prose that wrenches readers’ guts and leaves them empathizing with Ester, Andersson’s novel also places the role of the ever-scrutinized and eternally judged “the other woman” in the position of an emotional abuse victim.