Kate Horowitz is an autistic and disabled poet, essayist, and science writer in Maine. Her work has appeared in Rogue Agent, The Atlantic, and bitch magazine; on tarot cards and matchboxes; and in anthologies on inanimate objects, pop culture, and the occult. You can find her at katehorowitz.net, on Twitter @delight_monger, and on Instagram @kate_swriting. She lives by the sea.
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Reconstructing History: Lauren Russell’s 'Descent'
Veronica Silva is a Provost Fellow at the University of Central Florida, where she is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in PANK Magazine, The Acentos Review, The Blood Pudding, and Pleiades.
For the Love of “Umph”: A Review of 'Affect' by Charlene Elsby
BY LAUREN MALLETT
Erin, Ontario: The Porcupine’s Quill, 2020. 147 pages. $18.95. Order here.
A couple days ago I was in a Zoom after party celebrating the round-robin solo performances of three musician pals.
The conversation lulled at one point and another participant, a stranger to me, said, “I don’t know a thing about music. I don’t know where I’d start.”
“That’s the best place to be,” the most generous among us (not I) jumped in. “You know what sounds good to you, and that’s all you really need.”
In the parallel Zoomosphere of contemporary fiction, Canadian and philosophy scholar Charlene Elsby is not that stranger.
Elsby wasn’t rooting around for the plot slices and word cornucopias that simply looked, felt, or sounded best when she wrote Affect.
For one, Affect is her second rodeo. Hexis, her debut published in February 2020 by Clash Books, is Gone Girl meets Groundhog Day meets Nymphomaniac. The resulting concoction is spellbinding and disturbing as hell.
If Hexis is a cold-blooded, sadist verspertine, then Affect is a mammalian rom com attended by corpses and epistemological flights of worry.
Pick the medicine for what ails you.
Should you choose the latter, you are in for an endearing roman à clef in which the weirdo unnamed narrator, a philosophy graduate student, stalks and then pairs up with the just-as-weird Logan.
“‘It’s hard to want anything in this garbage existence,’” she comments to him early on. Such truth serum is heightened by her imagined bleedings-to-death and an epic bonfire.
The protagonist calls Logan “the best accident”, a cliché which is earned by her continual, existential qualification:
It might be true that anyone you come to know is magical. That might be the nature of the human. It’s hard to imagine that all of the others of them go on leading full inner and outer lives. In my experience, only I do. In my experience, I’m the one who experiences. This is why it’s so enamouring to learn that someone else does too.
Weirdos unite en amour! And soon thereafter hit and run from maybe corpses.
The pair’s discursive sparring is the first-and-foremost treat of the book. I would happily read a hundred more pages of their dialogue alone. They poke fun at one another, challenge each other’s foibles, and display care when it counts. Like when it’s time to escape a zombie bar takeover. After being separated at said bar, the two reunite:
‘Are you ready to go?’ he asked me.
‘Yes, let’s go.’
‘I bought us some sandwiches.’
‘That was a great idea.’
‘I know,’ said Logan.
‘You should never go anywhere else again, except maybe for sandwiches,’ I told him.
‘Sounds good.’
Affect reminds readers who have found their person of the miracle that they exist.
“Umph” is the protagonist’s miraculous refrain to this end, and it slaps.
Those readers who do not have—or have no interest in—such a yes-I-get-you-and-love-you-for-you partnership will also find moments to treasure.
The few secondary characters aren’t nearly as interesting as the protagonist and Logan. When the pair runs into her ex, Nick, on the way to a coffee shop, the dialogue slackens with snippets like “‘You hurt me’” and “‘You found me after I’d been broken.”’ Womp womp.
In contrast, Affect’s narrator speaks and thinks with wit and discernment: “One of the most horrid things I have had to come to terms with is that every moment of my life is one that I have had to live through.” I dare write that Affect (in effect) holds a candle to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag.
So why—hinted at by my ignorance-as-bliss anecdotal hook—do I anticipate some readers may overlook Affect?
Is it because Elsby is relatively new to the game and brings a cerebral approach distinct from the current trends of polyphony and nonlinearity? Yes.
Is it because the rom com is tired, and illustrating how Affect both cozies up to and bites its thumb at the genre feels reductive and moot? Probably.
Is it because this is the first review I’ve volunteered to write and actually written, and I feel like the ignoramus, nosing around for the grubby jewels that best preview this misfits’ love story? Most definitely.
I cheered on the inside at the landing of “Logan and I have chosen to direct ourselves toward the same universe.” Weirdos unite!
I finished Affect emboldened to love harder my absolutely-right-for-me partner and stand taller in my scuzzy, floral rain boots.
Oh, and an honest-to-god Nick Cave sticker adorns one chapter opening. A jewel, indeed.
Lauren Mallett’s (she/her/hers) poems appear or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Salamander, Passages North, Fugue, RHINO, and other journals. She lives on Oregon’s north coast, on the traditional homelands of the Clatsop people. Find her at www.laurenmallett.com.
Review of Anna Suarez's 'Papi Doesn't Love Me No More'
While the bruise of men is present in these poems, there are great alliances with women, “Sister says I touch/ and I destroy. ” The aspect of doubling is in this poetry, but women aren’t harmed by their doubles, rather, they feed of each other’s prowess. The twinning of the speaker’s self adds to the labyrinthine structure of the book, so though you encounter a new scene is each hole and crevice, there is still that familiar ache of letting go and the hope of regeneration.
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Review of James Diaz's "This Someone I Call Stranger" by Devon Balwit
While voicing anguish, Diaz’ narrators are never pitiable, nor does he allow the suffering self to wallow.
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Peter Milne Greiner
Interview with Peter Milne Greiner, Author of 'Lost City Hydrothermal Field'
Peter Milne Greiner's work has been featured in Motherboard, Dark Mountain, Fence, SciArt Magazine, and elsewhere, and has been lauded by the likes of Jeff VanderMeer and Claire L. Evans. He studied poetry at The New School under Sekou Sundiata, and is a scholar of the history of the Roaring Forties. In July of 2013 he sent a poem into space through the Jamesburg Earth Station in Carmel Valley, California. He is the author of the chapbook Executive Producer Chris Carter. LOST CITY HYDROTHERMAL Field is his first full length collection.
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via hystericalbooks
Review of 'A Red Witch, Every Which Way' by Juliet Cook & j/j hastain
What happens when two energies collide as if they were falling stars against an inky sky? What happens when two cauldrons boil over and into each other? What happens when two spirits are provoked to write as though conjoined and based on intuition? A Red Witch, Every Which Way is that result of such syntheses. The binding of unwinding and winding again, it’s the stitching of words, pages, and spirits. It is a spell the universe hummed into two sets of ears, banged into a writing desk, bled into a pen.
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Review of Siân S. Rathore’s 'Wild Heather'
In Wild Heather, we go inside the head of Rathore as lover, as friend, as non-binary human, kin, and yet none of the above, however everything plus more. We are brought into the fold, we watch the cuckold, and we thank the universe for heavy moments for without them, the muse would not be able to animate Rathore, to allow the spindling of poetic births and mutations of witchy proportions. A classic conjuring of Sexton or Tzara’s stream of consciousness writing. All the greats have done it, Rathore no different, following suit and instinct alike.
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From Katie's childhood
Review Of 'forget me / hit me / let me drink great quantities of clear, evil liquor' By Katie Schmid
There are things I may never know but there are things I’ve known all my life. Let me tell you something I rarely tell anyone; I knew I would have a firstborn daughter. I told my parents this growing up. I told my wife this before she was my wife. I told her this when she was pregnant for the first time. It was something more than a yearning or desire. The closest word I have for this feeling is faith.
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via Boost House Twitter
Review Of 'The Best Thing Ever' By Laura Theobald
The Best Thing Ever is telling us something we already know, but are hesitant to acknowledge. We are tired. We are at work. We think about Mom and Dad. We think about death and destruction and our government. Given the multitude of topics we could be discussing with colleagues and friends over text, the same things keep coming up. We repeat ourselves and don’t even know it. The best thing ever would be to put the iPhone down. The actual best thing ever is to hear, to listen to Theobald while we still can.
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Review Of 'Goodbye To All That' By Sari Botton
"I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a love-hate relationship with New York," said Sari Botton of her new anthology, Goodbye To All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York (Seal Press). The Manhattan expatriate gathered tales of love, loss and ultimately, change from twenty-eight female writers including Cheryl Strayed, Hope Edelman and Dani Shapiro. The 48 year old Long Island native lived in the city for over a decade before relocating to a small rural "hipster" town in the Hudson Valley with her husband Brian. In an interview in Greenwich Village, Botton explained that the impact of having been a New Yorker leaves an indelible mark. "The longer I am away, the more I miss it."
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