BY JOANNA C. VALENTE
Check out The Dot & Line's Nicktoons month for all you '80s & '90s kids. A favorite includes this piece on "When 'Rocko's Modern Life' Showed Me the Afterlife":
"Treat your friends well. Treat your body well. Then you, too, can avoid your own personal heck."
Minola Review's latest poetry issue is now up. Check out new work by Julie Mannell:
"the way your father spoke to your mother before he slammed the door on her aged figure. Come back and say it again like he did. Come back and say it again like he did."
Buzzfeed compiled a list of some of the 10 best poetry books that came out this year. Some of my favorites include Abigail Welhouse's TOO MANY HUMANS OF NEW YORK and Thomas Fucaloro's DEPRESSION CUPCAKES. An excerpt from Fucaloro's book from Yes Poetry:
The Brooklyn Museum just announced this awesome exhibit A Year of Yes: Reimagining Feminism:
"A Year of Yes presents a multiplicity of voices from the history of feminism and feminist art while also showcasing contemporary artistic practices and new thought leadership. The project recognizes feminism as a driving force for progressive change and takes the transformative contributions of feminist art during the last half-century as its starting point."
Why "Anne of Green Gables" is bisexual on Autostraddle:
"Look, obviously you know Anne was in love with Gilbert, and honestly, who wouldn’t be? He’s the dreamiest man in all of literature after Captain Frederick Wentworth. What you need to understand is that she also was just so very, very, very in love with Diana. And Diana was in love with her too."
Oh yes: Dawn Lundy Martin, Terrance Hayes, and Yona Harvey launched a center for Black poetics:
"The trio launched the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (CAAPP) as a creative think tank to spark conversation and collaboration among poets and other artists, and to promote and archive the work of African American poets for future generations."
There's a Klimt Tarot deck and I want it. Someone buy it for me.
There's also Lisa Frank clothing now. I already bought the cat dress, of course.
Christine Stoddard on what biracial women are sick of hearing at The Berry:
"You look so exotic. / You’re so spicy.
Calling biracial women 'exotic' others us. It implies that white is normal and everybody else is abnormal. Exoticizing us fetishizes and hyper sexualizes us, too. We mixed race women are not foods or flavors. We are humans—though if you know how to make pupusas and Mayan chocolate sprout from my skin at will, I’ll listen. And if you’re a rich white male, I may just copy the idea, claim it as my own, and make a lot of money off it. You know, as payback."
Michael J. Seidlinger's new book "Falter Kingdom" just came out from Unnamed Press. Read an interview and review here, and see how he lit it on fire here:
"It’s one of the few horror themes that haven’t bled into something derivative and boring. Okay, I know, I know, give me a moment to let me explain: Yes, there are quite a few demonic possession films and likely way too many books about essentially the same concepts. Yet what still remains fresh, for me at least, about the demonic possession subject is how it takes over a body and mind. Some of the most frightening concepts delve into a loss of control. This is the reason body horror became so compelling and A Nightmare on Elm Street, way back in the day, was frightening as hell: To lose control of your body and/or mind was about as vulnerable as you can get. There’s nothing more frightening than that."
Beauty Editor Sam Escobar on why they listed their weight and height on Twitter at US Weekly:
"A lot of that obsession was w/ numbers. A lot of those ‘goal weight’ numbers were so arbitrary but I absorbed them from people who said certain weights = good and other weights=bad."
Joel L. Daniels on black fatherhood:
"I am not an anomaly, nor a unicorn. I am not unique, nor am I worthy of a certain level of praise because I choose to be an active participant in my daughter’s life. The brother at the juice spot around my way once asked me if I was 'babysitting' when I strolled in. I had to answer politely, 'It’s not babysitting when the child is yours.' My stepfather and I shared a brief chuckle when he called me the 'babysitter' and I kindly replied, 'How do you babysit a child that’s yours?'"