Tiffany Alexander is a poet who has recently branched out into writing screenplays. Her goal is to put out more stories about mother and daughters of color into the world of Horror. She is currently working on a different spin on the haunted house movie
Read More
Vi Khi Nao Reviews Diana Hamilton's God Was Right
WAS DIANA HAMILTON RIGHT ABOUT GOD WAS RIGHT?
God Was Right (Ugly Duckling Press, Nov, 2018) reviewed by VI KHI NAO
How do I begin a review with the assumption that
my readers have read the collection already? How to
write a purposeless review…
By doing it this way:
I think God Was Wrong, but Diana Hamilton might be right
in that the absence of a cat may have shaped the title of this collection.
Rhetorical questions are not bound by the rules of wit. T
hey, they are governed by the law of absence.
To make something present by denying it. G
od is not here with us to prove if God was right.
So please take advantage of the situation.
But Hamilton is right here and it seems like we should listen to her.
Is this what Hamilton hopes to achieve with this narratively charged body of poetics? Surely not.
What language shapes the constitution and ontological fabric of her consciousness and super-subconsciousness such that the title of her collection is bold and ambitious and comedic and quietly enigmatic, reflecting and revealing the elaborate emotional, philosophical sector of its content? Well, don’t answer that. The question is too much.
The answer is the language of falling in love with friends, how cats are not designed to make us suffer (though if they die, they will), acceptance and obesity, rape jokes are okay, it’s hard to pay rent, sleeping with landlords is important for survival, yay to Bakhtin and fictional poetry, men have the potential to misunderstand (gynecological) yeast infections, buying inexpensive earrings and feeling fiscally self-conscious about their lack of social and fiscal value should be condoned frequently, there is no right way to superglue an ear to an animal. You just need to do it. Especially if you are an animal lover. So it can listen to something better.
I emphasized or clarified “gynecological” because for a while I thought “yeast infection” was a baking condition where bread had a phallic problem and had a hard time rising.
This answer makes no good argument for Madame Bovary.
Readers of Hamilton’s work do not necessarily require a large appetite for the long form, they just need some literary cows and a decent philosophy on bad writing and Hamilton is more than willing to assist with the misguidances, misalignments.
Hamilton excels in the long form.
This is an understatement, as demonstrated by her eloquent, aesthetically streamlined, compelling chapbook Universe, published three years ago, also by Ugly Duckling Presse. Useful to couple her chapbook with this collection.
I read her chapbook in one afternoon in South Bend, IN and now her full-length in Iowa City, IA over a cloudburst of a month.
No matter where on earth you read Diana Hamilton’s work, there are two certainties: God Was Right and God Was Wrong.
Since God Was Wrong hasn’t been written or published (I even tried to find such a title on Amazon, but all I found was I Was Wrong (touché, God, touché), as if platonic marriages are even legal,
you have a higher chance of enjoying your non non-existent reading experience more if you read Hamilton’s God Was Right first.
Hamilton’s essayistic poetry operates, yes, on a language level, but perhaps her work here is better described as rejuvenated logic made sense of by intellectualized senselessness and emotional intelligence. Choose one but not both. In other words, to suffer (for the sake of animality, yeast infections, existence, the death of a beloved cat, feminist soundbites in an era of misunderstanding and defensiveness, epistolary devotion, Sapphic detours, cat hugs or kisses), one must dominate hangovers and heartbreaks of form and transform them into “six months of incredible sexual pain” along the river of an imaginary epistolary kingdom.
If thoughts were parentheses, then Hamilton’s God Was Right is full of them.
Diana Hamilton’s intelligent and poetic essays operate like a Russian Doll, or rather a closet inside of a closet inside of another closet when she is already outside of the closet (literally and figuratively). To open the bedroom doors of her intelligence, you must open every floor inside of a 60+ story building where the elevator only works right when you are going down. You climb the stairs into her well-maintained, but somewhat combed, sentences until you run out of breath and then you do it all over again. There are eleven of these in this collection! You can and probably should start with her “Autobiography of Fatness” and then maybe skip floors. Or start with her “Essay on Bad Writing” which she read at a reading in Iowa City. It’s deliriously awesome and funny, which is to say: because of Diana Hamilton, essays don’t have to be tedious, too academic, full of prose blocks, and boring anymore. Avoid reading the last poetic essay with identical title “God Was Right” first. You may be forced to see why God Wasn’t Right for the right reasons. You are not ready for something Easy. Weed through the Hard stuff first because Easy is actually Hard.
More notes for a potentially well-written review of God Was Right:
God Was Right is a visual philosophical treatise on E.E. Cummings’s “Since Feeling Is First”…. "for life's not a paragraph/and death i think is no parenthesis"
God Was Right or How To Marry Your Platonic Friends in Poly-culture Where Women Are Allowed To Write Bad Poetry And Have The Courage To Encourage Men To Write Bad Poetry Too.
Some semi-remarkable lines from her book that I love. I say “semi” not because they are not brilliant. They are brilliant when they stroll in the right neighborhood of context. Context is content here, folks. In context, these lines are obesely beautiful:
p.31 : “They’re too well written to seem seriously engaged in risking the self.”
p.85 : “I want to love a man without holding his heterosexuality against him.”
p.85 : “God was right when he made us/ want to marry each other”
Advice on how to read the rightness of God:
Treat it more like a toy or a wedding ring than a book.
Play around with it. Touch it. Don’t smell it. It’s not a dog and it can’t bark.
Treat it like a cat that will not stare at you especially when you are naked and reading it while self-conscious.
Oh, libraries of cats.
In preservation of books.
VI KHI NAO is the author of Sheep Machine (Black Sun Lit, 2018) and Umbilical Hospital (Press 1913, 2017), and of the short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture, which won FC2’s Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize in 2016, the novel, Fish in Exile (Coffee House Press, 2016), and the poetry collection, The Old Philosopher, which won the Nightboat Books Prize for Poetry in 2014. Her work includes poetry, fiction, film and cross-genre collaboration. Her stories, poems, and drawings have appeared in NOON, Ploughshares, Black Warrior Review and BOMB, among others. She holds an MFA in fiction from Brown University.
DIANA HAMILTON is the author of three books—God Was Right (Ugly Duckling Presse), The Awful Truth(Golias Books), and Okay, Okay(Truck Books)—and four chapbooks, including Universe (UDP). She writes poetry, fiction, and criticism about style, crying, shit, kisses, dreams, fainting, writing, and re-reading. You can walk through audio recordings of her dreams in the first-person shooter by Alejandro Miguel Justino Crawford in Diana Hamilton's Dreams (Gauss PDF). Her poetry and critical writing have appeared (or are forthcoming) in BOMB, Lambda Literary, and Social Text Journal among others. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature from Cornell University, and she currently works as the Director of Baruch College’s Writing Center.
Poetry Weekly: Omotara James, John Murillo, E. Kristin Anderson
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, Xenos, No(body) (forthcoming, Madhouse Press, 2019), and is the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault. They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Joanna is the founder of Yes Poetry and the senior managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of their writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Them, Brooklyn Magazine, BUST, and elsewhere. Joanna also leads workshops at Brooklyn Poets. joannavalente.com / Twitter: @joannasaid / IG: joannacvalente / FB: joannacvalente
Brandon Amico on Why He Doesn't Want to Be Unreachable
Brandon Amico is a writer whose debut collection of poems, DISAPPEARING, INC., is forthcoming in March 2019 from Gold Wake Press.
Read More
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Bewitched: When The Velvet Underground Cast an Identity Spell on Me
Stephanie Valente lives in Brooklyn, NY. She has published Hotel Ghost (Bottlecap Press, 2015) and waiting for the end of the world (Bottlecap Press, 2017) and has work included in Susan, TL;DR, and Cosmonauts Avenue. Sometimes, she feels human. http://stephanievalente.com
DIY Gift Ideas for The Magical, the Dreamy, and the Crafty
BY LISA MARIE BASILE
I have never — literally, ever — been crafty (excerpt with journaling — which I do, on a very basic level). When I stepped inside a Michael’s for the first time, I was overwhelmed. It was alien to me.
However, I was tasked with ‘making’ something when I working on my last book, Light Magic for Dark Times. My editor suggested creating something sweet and unique as a way to get people interested in my book.
Creative paralysis. A crafty person does not a writer make!
So, I watched some videos on YouTube, bought a few bits from Etsy, and began creating little spell bags. I used shells (many collected from the beach, some bought), sachet bags, dried roses and lavender, scrolls, and nautical trinkets — and I fell in love with the process. I made hundreds of these for my readers and potential book sellers. (Hint: book promotion is way, way harder than I ever thought it would be — I’ve got an article coming out about that soon).
So, if you like to make things with your hands, create your own gifts or DIY goodies rather than spend money on mass-produced items, or simply surround yourself with intentional and special objects, I’ve rounded up some of the best DIY gift-making videos I watched.
These will help you create dreamy, literary, and magical bits and bobs. Made with intention and care, these little beauties not only make beautiful home decor (or, as I said, gifts) but the process of making something can be meditative and rewarding.
Here we go:
Review of Christine Stoddard's 'Water for the Cactus Woman'
Christine Stoddard’s poetry collection, Water for the Cactus Woman (Spuytenduyvil, 2018) is a meditation on family, the body, and navigating a bi-cultural map of memories. The most looming figure in the poems is the speaker’s dead grandmother, who appears in the most mundane of places, bringing dread to the speaker. In “The Cactus Centerpiece”, the ghost provokes jealousy and a cactus shapeshifts from protective shield to a portal for the dead, “We never named the cactus/ or the petite panther, / even though we named/everything, good or bad.”
Read More
Poetry Weekly: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Jessica Morey-Collins, Justin Karcher
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, Xenos, No(body) (forthcoming, Madhouse Press, 2019), and is the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault. They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Joanna is the founder of Yes Poetry and the senior managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of their writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Them, Brooklyn Magazine, BUST, and elsewhere. Joanna also leads workshops at Brooklyn Poets. joannavalente.com / Twitter: @joannasaid / IG: joannacvalente / FB: joannacvalente
June Gehringer Tells Us What She's Afraid Of
Born and raised in Omaha, NE, JUNE GEHRINGER is a mixed Chinese trans woman who is somehow still alive. She is the author of I Don’t Write About Race (2018, CCM), I love you it looks like rain (Be About It 2017), and EVERYONE IS A BIG BUG TO SOMEONE (self-published) 2017. She is the co-founder of tenderness yea, and tweets @unlovablehottie. She holds a B.A. in English from Loyola University New Orleans and has worked as a cook since she was 16.
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, Xenos, No(body) (forthcoming, Madhouse Press, 2019), and is the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault. They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Joanna is the founder of Yes Poetry and the senior managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of their writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Them, Brooklyn Magazine, BUST, and elsewhere. Joanna also leads workshops at Brooklyn Poets. joannavalente.com / Twitter: @joannasaid / IG: joannacvalente / FB: joannacvalente
5 Film & TV Inspired Nightgowns You Need
When I was a teen, my hobbies were a little singular. I loved moodily soaking in the bathtub in the middle of the night and wearing my pajamas well into the afternoon. Back then, this was the kind of behavior that led to my family and friends teasing me, constantly asking why I wasn’t hanging out at the neighborhood Arby’s like everyone else. But, it seems nightgowns are making a comeback (and perhaps they have been for a while now). In honor of Lana Del Rey’s new song, “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have” here’s a list of some of my favorite nightwear in the media, and some links so you can get yourself a nightgown to tear around in well into the afternoon.
Read More
Music Friyay: Stevie Nicks, Sun Ra, Hamilton Leithauser
Music brings people together. Communities are created and fostered through melodies, which is why it’s important to promote excellent work by musicians both popular and obscure from all over the world. As a music lover myself, I’m always searching for new music (regardless of when it was released).
Read More
Poetry by Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi
Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi is the founder of Dark Moon Poetry & Arts, a monthly series which spotlights the creative feminine and non-binary energies of North Texas. She can often be found on Dallas sidewalks using her typewriter to birth poems for strangers. She has been published in Entropy, The Boiler, Anthropology Now!, Bearing the Mask, and elsewhere. Her work has been featured by WFAA, KERA, the Dallas Morning News, and others. Her chapbook, Moon Woman, is forthcoming from Thoughtcrime Press.
Poetry Weekly: Kay Ulanday Barrett, Devin Kelly, Elizabeth Metzger
As the senior managing editor at Luna Luna and the founding editor at Yes Poetry, you could say writing is important to me, especially poetry. For me, it’s vital to highlight poetic voices in order to support literature, activism, and expression.
Read More
Poetry by Karina Bush
Karina Bush is an Irish writer, born in Belfast and now living in Rome. She is the author of three books, ‘BRAIN LACE’ (BareBackPress, 2018), ‘50 EURO’ (BareBackPress, 2017), and ‘MAIDEN’ (48th Street Press, 2016). She is currently finishing up a collection of stories set in Belfast, a story from this collection was recently published by Akashic Books. She is also a visual poet and released a set of visual poems to accompany ‘BRAIN LACE’. For more visit her website karinabush.com and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/karinabushxx/.
Read More
Hillary Leftwich on Happiness & Why It's Important to Love Childhood Films
Hillary Leftwich is the author of the forthcoming collection Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How To Knock from Civil Coping Mechanisms (CCM) Press in 2019. She earned her MFA in fiction and poetry from the Mile High MFA at Regis University. She is the poetry and prose editor for Heavy Feather Review and curator/host for At the Inkwell Denver, a monthly reading series. In her day jobs she has worked as a private investigator, maid, repo agent, and pinup model. Currently, she freelances as a writer, editor, writing workshop instructor, and guest instructor for Kathy Fish’s Fast Flash Workshop. Her writing can be found or is forthcoming in print and online in such journals as Entropy, The Missouri Review, The Review Review, Hobart, SmokeLong Quarterly, Matter Press, Literary Orphans, Sundog Lit, NANO Fiction, Occulum, Jellyfish Review, and others.
Read More