Author: Heavy Feather

Nonfiction Review: Ariana Duckett on Elif Batuman’s The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

Elif Batuman completed her PhD in comparative literature just before publishing her essay collection The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. While working towards the degree, she spent a summer abroad translating and analyzing Uzbek and Russian prose and poetry. She poses an insight on novel writing: “the novel form…
Poetry Review: Scott Ferry Reads George Perreault’s lie down as you were born

George Perreault’s lie down as you were born not only makes a song of grief, but peoples a town, grows a forest, seeds a sky, and weaves a myth in threads of sorrow. I was so immediately taken with these poems, pulled in and not allowed ransom. In these poems the voices of father, mill…
Bad Survivalist: Three Poems by Jiwon Choi

Judith Becomes An Eager Iris I woke up this morningthinking I would take good careof the daybut come through it with a dress teemingwith the cells and particulate matter of the soldierI had to kill.It’s because I followed the bird of lustinto a mazethe size of a queen-sized bedwhere I became trapped between bear skinand…
A Short Story for Haunted Passages: “Room 625” by George Choundas

A man sits in a double-parked car with a sign in the window reading, Room625 The sign attracts attention. A room for rent at the rate of $625 a month is a steal. The rental market in, near, and around the city is a sustained explosion. People will approach the car, point at the sign,…
“it all simply modulates incomprehensibly”: On Richard Hell’s Poetry Collection What Just Happened by Peter Valente

When he was in his early twenties and living in lower Manhattan in 1974, Richard Hell founded the band Television with Tom Verlaine, a friend from high school. He eventually split up with Verlaine and created the Heartbreakers, along with Johnny Thunders, the well-known guitarist who had played with the New York Dolls. Later, he…
New Side A Poem: “In Praise of Point Break in 15 Parts” by Drevlow

In Praise of Point Break in 15 Parts 1. Gary Busey says, Surf’s up, ace.Says, Welcome to SeaWorld, kid.Says, Just act stoned and ask questions.Gary Busey has been a cop in LA for twenty-two years.And in those twenty-two years, two big things have changed.The air got dirty and the sex got clean, he says.Drum roll…
Poetry Review: G.H. Mosson Reads Mag Gabbert’s Sex Depression Animals

As part of the arc of autobiographical American poetry, Mag Gabbert’s academic-press debut is a chiseled, yet tender self-portrait across lyric poems that skate around finalities and resonate through intersecting images, vignettes, and emotions. In this way, Gabbert’s heartfelt, jagged, and impressive poetry marks a departure from confessionalism’s origins in landed insight: Plath’s epiphanies, Lowell’s…
New Poetry for Side A: “Is Gone/Are Back” by Maria Fischer

Is Gone/Are Back Credit reports Are gone. Calorie counting Is gone. The addictions counselor Is gone. The scrip for clomipramine Is gone. Poor cell phone reception Is gone. Flying commercial Is gone. Spoilers Are gone. Capitalism Is gone. Jellyfish Are back. And not the crafted kind, crocheted out of discarded plastic bags, extensions left behind…
Flavor Town USA Poetry: “Our Very First Shared Fig Newton, 1986” by Zebulon Huset

A buried poem* of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “First Fig” My early cookie preference was for classics—Oreo, Chips Ahoy, the exotic Nutter Butterfor special occasions that don’t requirecandle or cake. All day at summer campfending off “Indian” burns and wet williesat the same time, mealtimes the only respitefor both of us, it seemed. Our otherwiseempty…