February 2005
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"I talked to [Burroughs] at length once. We shared a boyfriend, which caused some problems between us a bit. But we weren't friends. We nodded respectfully at each other, and he was kind about my work, which meant a lot. Being compared so often to Burroughs when I started out bugged me a lot though, cos he wasn't an influence on my work much at all."
by
Justin Taylor
"When asked what makes 32 different, she says, "Smaller, thinner. No reviews or interviews. No essays, though we did that at first. Only poetry. There aren't that many journals doing that these days -- poems front to back, poems in the middle, nothing in the way of the poems." Focusing on one thing has worked. When you pick up a copy and flip through the pages, you find nothing but poetry. While that's not unexpected for a poetry magazine, more often than not you'll have to filter book reviews, essays, interviews, and articles. While those things have merit, by leaving them out, the emphasis stays on the poems. "
by
Matthew Kirkpatrick
On November 25, 2004, translator and poet Stephen Mitchell appeared at the Michigan Ave. Borders, reading from his fantastic new book,
Gilgamesh: A New English Version, answering questions, and signing books for an intimate audience of about a dozen or so.
by
Gordon McAlpin
"In analyzing romance novels, the standards set for more mainstream books should be disregarded due to the special and unique situation of these books: there is a stigma attached to reading these stories. As told in engrossing detail in the best romance book website on the internet, All About Romance, most avid romance readers are embarrassed and shamed by overtly sensual images on some covers. And at the same time, there are marketing and more subjective qualities and questions that need to be addressed in romance novels as opposed to more mainstream ones: Do the models look good? Does it look sexy? Does it make you feel sexy? And most of all, for lots of people, can you read this on the el without some hipster making cutting looks at you?"
by
Sharon Adarlo
It is about a quest, about the search each character must make for truth, for peace, for love. This is a message that Nicole Kelby is all too familiar with, and also uniquely qualified to conduct.
by
Colleen Mondor
"There was a lot of local controversy surrounding my first collection, Altmann's Tongue, which cost me my job at Brigham Young University, a Mormon university I was working at the time. I talk about that in an afterword the paperback version of Altmann's Tongue -- it was very difficult, and ultimately precipitated the collapse of my marriage. But also, knowing that people might dramatically object to what I do made me think very carefully about what I was doing and made me very committed to it: knowing that my life could fall apart because of my fiction made me want to be certain of every word I put on the page. If it was going to destroy me, I wanted it to be worth it."
by
Geoffrey H. Goodwin
"Anybody who reads poetry can see the ubiquitous self-doubts poets evince regarding the validity/value of their art. Compare that to the eternally smug self-satisfied attitudes exhibited by the advocates and practitioners of music. They take it for granted that music is the highest art, the universal art, the only art that transcends all borders and babels. They never question that given assumption. The arrogance of composers and musicians is insufferable."
by
Adam Travis
