Author: Heavy Feather

“Taking Liberties”: Four Views of Maggie Nelson’s On Freedom, a review by Ben Lewellyn-Taylor

1. What It Is In her 2011 book The Art of Cruelty, Maggie Nelson argued that “true moral complexity is rarely found in simple reversals. More often it is found by wading into the swamp, getting intimate with discomfort, and developing an appetite for nuance.” Her latest, On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint,…
And the Winners Are… 2021 Friends in Letters Results

Hello Feathers! Ryan here. I’m very happy to announce that Brian Oliu and Tasha Coryell have announced their picks for the winners of the second-annual Zachary Doss Friends in Letters Fellowship. In a year that has been more isolating than, perhaps, we might have anticipated, it has been a true source of joy to read…
“Inventory of Doubt”: A Reflection on Form and Complex Language in Landon Godfrey’s Inventory of Doubts

Landon Godfrey is it treat to the poet who likes to read the comical and the complex. But for this reviewer, the real star of The Poetry within Inventory of Doubts is the poet’s dedication and loyalty to the consistency of form. On each page for the most part with a few exceptions, Godfrey lays…
The Three Veils of Ibn Oraybi, a novella by Vincent Czyz, reviewed by Jeffrey Kahrs

The Three Veils of Ibn Oraybi is packed with literary juice: It’s mythical like magical realism, yet historical in that we detect Ottoman and Caucasian outlines enclosing the edges of the tale. The novella is as plotted as a detective story, surprising us with its twists and turns, and it is a morality tale. The…
Haunted Passages Poem: “Tangerine Dream” by Michael Sikkema

Michael Sikkema is a poet. He has a book forthcoming from Trembling Pillow Press, a book forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press, and a chapbook of sound poems and collages fresh out from Low Frequency Press. He enjoys correspondence about owl communication, sound studies, and raising pleasantly feral children at Michael.Sikkema@gmail.com. Image: healthclubnu.nl
Corrupted Vessels, a swallow::tale press novella by Briar Ripley Page, reviewed by June Martin

Briar Ripley Page’s novella, Corrupted Vessels, from swallow::tale press, is unconcerned with the truth. Not in the unreliable narrator sense, where we have reason to doubt the story which is relayed to us—indeed, none of the four narrators are afforded the chance to mislead us any more than they, themselves, are misled or misinformed about…
“Catalog of Nameless Girls,” a short story by Madeline Vosch for Haunted Passages

I have been sleeping with a married man for the past few months. I know, I know. But hear me out: I have been lonely. Joe is barely married. Separated. Almost divorced. When I met him, his wife had already moved out, already taken their daughter to a new house on the other side of…
A Review of Aimee Parkison’s Sister Séance by Stephen Daly

Set in Massachusetts c. 1865, Aimee Parkison’s novel Sister Séance presents the haunted world of a family with many dark secrets, and how those secrets can rise unexpectedly and wreak havoc on the living. We are introduced to a family of four sisters—the Hayden girls—who, each very different from each other, carry the memories of a troubled…
Deadheading and Other Stories, an award-winning short-story collection by Beth Gilstrap, reviewed by Drew Belle Elsey

I was born 700 miles away from the Carolinas, on the other side of the Mississippi, away from mountain peaks, cabins in the woods and piers jutting into the ocean. But as I was reading Beth Gilstrap’s award-winning Deadheading, I could smell the chicken sizzling in full-fat butter and okra crisping in cornmeal on my…