Blog Post
Caroline Kim's characters in "The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories" ask what is most important in life
by christopherporter
A woman loses a child and yet she helps another, Suyon, pregnant with a baby rumored to not be by her husband, give birth. Then, with war breaking out in Korea, the woman meets an American, marries him, and moves to the United States. There, she finds herself engaging in animal husbandry and applies the same tactics she did with her acquaintance:
You get good at birthing horses and people send for you when they have difficult cases, mares too frightened and in pain to calm down, to do what is good for them.
Blog Post
U-M Zell visiting prof Sumita Chakraborty’s "Arrow" displays the poet's exploration of words' contradictory meanings
by christopherporter
Going into reading Sumita Chakraborty’s debut poetry collection, Arrow, it’s not a secret that the book follows traumatic experiences. As she describes in “Sumita Chakraborty on writing Arrow,” which was shared with me by the publisher, Alice James Books:
Blog Post
EMU professor Christine Hume's "Saturation Project" offers a lyric memoir composed of three essays
by christopherporter
Three essays fill Saturation Project, a new book by Christine Hume, a professor at Eastern Michigan University. Described as a lyric memoir, the text obliquely depicts various moments, ranging from Hume’s childhood to interactions with her daughter.
Blog Post
Phil Christman traverses time, politics, and culture in his nonfiction essay collection "Midwest Futures"
by christopherporter
This story was originally published on February 6, 2020.
What words come to mind when you think of the Midwest?
Blog Post
Molly Spencer covers chronic illness, domestic life, and nature in her second poetry book, "Hinge"
by christopherporter
Hinge by Molly Spencer shows a world in which the poet seeks to find footing in a constantly shifting landscape and body. Views, possessions, relationships, and physical capacity change and merge and vanish at various points. The multipart poem “Objects of Faith” reveals these different angles by looking at things like a window or a berry and distilling them to what they do: “To hold in place / once piece of the world” or “To be that ache / in someone’s mouth,” respectively. This instability and the feeling of being on the cusp of something appears through the changing seasons, motherhood, and domestic life.
Blog Post
Food, immigration, and female experience intertwine in poet Jihyun Yun's book "Some Are Always Hungry"
by christopherporter
Some Are Always Hungry by Jihyun Yun concentrates not only on cuisine but also on the ways the world views, consumes, and treats womanhood—how women are made to push through and past very physical, personal challenges, and to try again. The attention to these topics is inseparable from history, trauma, and family, whether it’s on memories of immigration, the shame carried in female bodies, or the comfort of a meal made from bodies of animals.
These poems tie together generational and physical pain, recipes, and urges—the urges to survive, to procreate, to eat, to seek fullness. They read in the way that you may listen to someone talking with the leaps between thoughts that are colored in by context and word choice. One poem looks back on a moment:
Blog Post
Alison Swan's poetry collection "A Fine Canopy" celebrates the natural world
by christopherporter
The natural world and the built environment sometimes seem so enmeshed that the borders between them blur. We walk into the fluorescent lighting of a store and then back out into the day’s weather. We go to the beach and some sand trails, then back inside vehicles and homes.
Poet Alison Swan explores this complexity in the lives that we live both with nature and in our manmade world in her new collection, A Fine Canopy (Wayne State University Press). One poem called “Lake Effect” considers how the environment coexists and contends with human life:
Blog Post
Author and A2 Pioneer Instructor Jeff Kass Contemplates the Working Life in "Teacher/Pizza Guy"
by christopherporter
This story originally ran September 3, 2019. Kass is also author of the Fifth Avenue Press book "Takedown," a murder mystery. AADL cardholders can download the novel in PDF format here.
What do you do?
Blog Post
Diane Cook's novel "The New Wilderness" envisions a world after extreme climate change
by christopherporter
Imagine being dropped off in the wilderness, uninhabited except for 19 people with you and rangers who patrol the land. Modern amenities are nonexistent, but the upside is that the air quality is much better than the polluted city. You live nomadically and hunt, fish, and gather to survive. This is not an extended camping trip. It is your new way of life.
Blog Post
Female protagonists populate U-M MFA graduate Sara Schaff's new collection of short stories
by christopherporter
What you have. What you want. What you hang on to. What you give up.
Jeans. A house. A spouse. Drawings. Places. Jobs. A fantasy.