404: Identity Not Found
In March 2008, a month shy of his forty-fifth birthday, the critic and poet Reginald Shepherd was battling an aggressive form of colon cancer. The disease had already metastisized to…
Out of Body: Reading Gender Through “Women’s Fiction”
It was a book my two boys wanted me to read to them over and over again: the story of how Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel, Mary Ann, dug…
Someday You’ll Love Roger Reeves
Shortly after the New Year, the Poetry Society of America shared the responses of Black poets to the question, “What’s African American about African American Poetry?” in its ongoing “Yet…
Musica Ex Machinae
An incidental byproduct of machinery, music muttered under the breath, the sound of human voices and the human heart: Hum, the title of Jamaal May’s debut poetry collection, is also…
Reboot: Landscape: New England
Alexandria Peary’s Control Bird Alt Delete is her third book of poetry and winner of the 2013 Iowa Poetry Prize. It is a collection that plays with the idea of…
In Which The Critical Flame Dedicates One Year to Women Writers and Writers of Color
Women writers and writers of color are underserved and undervalued by the contemporary literary community. The phenomenon has been well documented by critics such as Roxane Gay and Ruth Franklin, and by…
A Feminist Ontology of Ooziness: On Kim Hyesoon
Kim Hyesoon’s 132-page translated collection All the Garbage of the World, Unite! contains a poetry that is not built on metaphysical or metaphoric associations. An object, image, or process does…
His Blues to Be Somebody: Charlie Parker’s Early Years
Every superhero needs a suitable origin story, and great jazz musicians are no exception. In Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker, the acclaimed cultural critic Stanley…
The Poetics of Gender Resistance
The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease. Distaste which takes no credit to itself is best. These concluding lines from Marianne Moore’s “Snakes, Mongooses, Snake-Charmers,…