Review Of 'Goodbye To All That' By Sari Botton

February 19, 2016

"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."

Printable Victorian Valentine's Day Images (& Some Erotic Bits) For Your Lovelies

February 14, 2016

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

Valentine's Day is thought to stem from Lupercalia, a Pre-Roman Pagan festival celebrated between February 13-15 (can we please get back to three days of V-Day?), and so the gauche, commercial excess was not the point. Lupercalia, to the Pagans, was a time for thwarting evil spirits and cleansing the space of its negativity. On this day, because how darling, it is said that the birds chose their mates.

In 14th-century England and France, poems became the primary Valentine's Day (please see Geoffrey Chacer's The Love Unfeigned, a 14th-century poem not specifically written 'for' Valentines, but romantic nonetheless; let us know if you can translate that better than we can). The poem became common again in the 18th century, and especially in the Victorian Era, when sentimentality reached its abslolute peak and V-Day's commercial value heightened. Embossed, lace, ribbons, floral patterns and deliciously ornate designs were the norm. #swoon

And then we got our filthy modern hands on history.

If, like us, you're sick to death of paying $4.95 for a contemporary, soulless, Teddy Bear V-Day card from Duane Reade, we've compiled a few of our favorite printable Victorian Valentine's Day cards. Our recommendation? Print these out, make yourself your own Valentine and create a little Victorian shrine for yourself. Or your lover. Whatever you'd like.

Just click the image to download the print, and if you want more, you can click into each photo and peruse the sites, which will allow you to either download more prints or send a physical Valentine to someone. (We still recommend sending yourself some love in the mail.)

And so, here are a few images (along with a few naughty Victorian bits) for you to swoon over.

Fiction: Boys On Bicycles

February 11, 2016

Sometimes I think about it, though. Sex, not love. I imagine scenarios as graphically as possible in order to see how much I can stand. It’s like a test. When I feel the bile coming up into my throat, that’s when I stop. It usually doesn’t take very long. I stare at the grass, or a garbage can, or anything really normal and asexual, to get those sick images of calloused thumbs and everyday disfigurements out of my head.

Everyone Needs to Read Natalie Diaz's 'When My Brother Was an Aztec'

February 10, 2016

My world was utterly destroyed by Natalie Diaz at Brooklyn Book Festival in 2014. Two years later, I still remember. I was lucky enough to have heard Natalie read her poetry and discuss identity & womanhood at a panel hosted by St. Francis College, and moderated by Hafizah Geter. Her words moved me; her words dove straight into my own mouth, restructuring my cells, taking away some and adding others both newer & stronger. The word ‘move’ is a verb which means, “a change of place or position.”

Writing Back to Nova Scotia: On Choosing Elizabeth Bishop

February 9, 2016

Elizabeth Bishop was a poet whose personal life was fraught with family struggles, questions of sexuality, and a great deal of loss. A casual reader might recall some of these emotions exhibited in her masterful villanelle, “One Art.” Filmmakers have even attempted to capture snippets of Bishop’s interior life during her time in Brazil in the recent movie, Reaching for the Moon. However, despite the fact that she moved throughout her life and perhaps never found her “place,” her readers can sense that she felt a strong tie to family, legacy, and her historical moment. Bishop’s “Poem,” a short piece about a puzzling family heirloom, serves as an excellent example of how she negotiated her historical ties, ties that in many ways have formed the basis of my complicated relationship with Bishop’s work.

Interview with Poet Liz Axelrod on 'Go Ask Alice'

February 8, 2016

Recently, I had the privlege of reading Liz Axelrod's chapbook "Go Ask Alice" (Finishing Line Press, 2016), which was a finalist in the 2015 New Women's Voices Series at Finishing Line Press. In the collection, Axelrod invites us into a bizarre, distorted landscape similar, echoing Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" landscape. She doesn't stray away from what we are all obsessed and anxious over--sex, body image, technology, politics--and makes us evaluate the world we live in.

Poetry by Margaryta Golovchenko

February 5, 2016

Curated by Lisa A. Flowers

Pantone 13-1520: Rose Quartz

Ask why the seas were not made to be pink, for extra consideration

inquiring if they’d like to be repainted. This

is the best question to occupy the wonder with.

Feed curiosity not through the bars of a cage like some mutt,

but on an opal plate. Offer cutlery

that isn’t known to exist. And when she grows her marrow

shall be rich in sugared peach slices as a service

to those who will be taking bites out of her soon. Bathe

her wounds in this same pink sea –

even nature doesn’t mind experimentation –

dress them with last year’s wish lists. That way

she’ll have something to think on while she verifies your star

charts, proposing the longest possible route.

Pantone 15-3919: Serenity

Find comfort at the bottom of a swimming pool, among

the accumulated remains of fizzy soda giggles

and unfulfilled kisses. If that’s not enough find street

lamps that have not yet been robbed of their lightbulb hearts.

Collect them. Absorb the aroma

that only comes from the most intimate rambles

released around dusk. And when you’ve filled up go back

to the bottom of that pool. You’ll find the sun

dances best when the water has swallowed you whole,

telling stories along the way about every flower it has dreamed

of growing. If only someone was considerate enough

to walk past with an ink bottle.

Margaryta Golovchenko is a first year undergrad student at the University of Toronto, Canada, and serves as an editor for The Spectatorial and Half Mystic. Her work has appeared in [parenthetical], In/Words, The Impressment Gang, and other publications, and her debut chapbook, Miso Mermaid, is forthcoming from words(on)pages press this fall. She is an avid tea drinker and a collector of trinkets and curiosities. When not maneuvering around her mountain of to-be-read books she can be found sharing her (mis)adventures on Twitter @Margaryta505.

From Foster Care to a PhD in Biology, My Fears Are Still the Same

February 4, 2016

I met Zach while choking on a Vietnamese Spring Roll at Lemon Grass, in University Heights. I was on a blind date with a man named William, my first date after my divorce to Hank.

Violence As Violence: A Response to Zachary Schomburg’s “Poetry As Violence”

February 1, 2016

It wasn’t in my plan to start this article this way, but on thinking about the most important parts of Zachary Schomburg’s essay “Poetry As Violence,” I continue to hold in mind his idea that the trauma of violence is in the small details around the violence, and I remember the snippets of memories that occasionally come to me out of nowhere like moths in the night, and that, like moths, I try to bat away before they can land on me. The one that comes to mind first is a confession. It is a memory I’ve told almost no one and I’m telling you here not so you can experience violence, but so you can be humanized in your observance of someone else’s. March 9 (tomorrow, as I write this) marks the sixth anniversary of the day I, at sixteen, downed a bottle of aspirin and tried to go to sleep. What lingers of the violence isn’t the act of swallowing the chalky pills, or the burning in my stomach I couldn’t explain to you if I tried, it isn’t the activated charcoal I forced into my own body, not out of a desire to live but out of the embarrassment of being seen trying not to live.

A Review of Thomas Fucaloro’s 'It Starts from the Belly and Blooms'

January 26, 2016

For me, It Starts from the Belly and Blooms is like having a conversation with myself–chaotic, messy, violent, aware, vulnerable, and scary. It’s a conversation you know the answers to but are too afraid to say. While the book is definitely am emotional journey not always easy getting through, it ends with beauty, with rebirth: “so I gave it a sound/a sunrise/a star.”

George Wakes Up

January 22, 2016

She stood there staring at him wide-eyed for so long that he felt his hands go clammy, realizing his mistake too late of having fecundated yet another triviality. Finally she let out a great horse whinny of a snort, rolled her large bright eyes exaggeratedly, and began to giggle uncontrollably. She spilled onto the floor in a fit of hysteric giggles, so tickled was she by this gesture of his, so transparent in meaning. She knew she ought to stop, so as to avoid hurting the man’s feelings further, but the fact that he had found this declaration worthy of rousing her from a most comfortable slumber allowed her a few giggles more, or so she reasoned.

A LGBTQ Comic Book I'm Obsessed With: The Wicked + The Divine

January 20, 2016

My recent obsession with comic books may inconvenience my wallet, but has visually opened colorful, grandiloquent worlds for me. Already one of my favorite comic book publishers—Image Comics—recently released their collection of “Image Firsts” comics, reprints of popular and iconic comics for only $1 each. Among these is the first issue of my latest obsession: The Wicked + The Divine.

The Contemporary Poetry Book For You, According To Your Zodiac Sign

January 20, 2016

Editor’s Note: This column was cobbled together by several Luna Luna staffers. It is dedicated to pairing the zodiac with the arts, but don’t worry; this isn’t a final list. Watch out for this column again and again, as there are far too many other poets we love!

Tori Amos & The Écriture Féminine: Boys for Pele 20 Years Later

January 19, 2016

My problem? I couldn’t find any female writers who wrote in this way. Even Cixous’s ultimate examples of écriture féminine writers were men: James Joyce and John Genet. I hadn’t discovered the postmodernist novelist Kathy Acker yet. I adored female poets like Plath and Sexton and Millay, but they seemed to assimilate into the male canon rather than defy it. But listening to Tori Amos’s 'Boys for Pele'—twenty years old as of January 22nd—felt like the purest expression of this mode I’ve been able to find. And it was a revelation.

Review of 'Arcana: The Tarot Poetry Anthology'

January 19, 2016

When I received "Arcana: The Tarot Poetry Anthology" (Minor Arcana Press, 2015) in the mail, I was pretty excited. Anyone who knows me even a little knows I love anything Tarot-related, so Tarot poetry is basically my favorite thing in this world. I'm happy to say this anthology did not disappoint.