Essay – Michigan Quarterly Review

Essay

An image of the book cover of Fady Joudah's "[...]: Poems" laid over a black-orange background

“Who is Without Echo?”: The Future Reader of Fady Joudah’s […]

[…] A continuation … a redaction … a conversation in process…the message that announces its hesitation—three blinking dots as a correspondent composes a response. Even before opening Palestinian American poet Fady Joudah’s latest collection, its pictographic title […] invites the reader to question their own reading practices. The book rebukes easy articulation, its title a […]

“Who is Without Echo?”: The Future Reader of Fady Joudah’s […] Read More »

[…] A continuation … a redaction … a conversation in process…the message that announces its hesitation—three blinking dots as a correspondent composes a response. Even before opening Palestinian American poet Fady Joudah’s latest collection, its pictographic title […] invites the reader to question their own reading practices. The book rebukes easy articulation, its title a

Image of a few sharpies and name cards on a chestnut brown desk.

Exchanging Names

The first thing I became aware of, as I stood blinking in the five-a.m. brightness of Taoyuan International Airport, was my own name staring back at me. It gleamed in thick black letters on a white poster board, but the poster wasn’t the strange part. The strange part was the individual holding it up. His

Exchanging Names Read More »

The first thing I became aware of, as I stood blinking in the five-a.m. brightness of Taoyuan International Airport, was my own name staring back at me. It gleamed in thick black letters on a white poster board, but the poster wasn’t the strange part. The strange part was the individual holding it up. His

MY HAIRDRESSER IS DEAD

Published in Issue 63.2: Spring 2024 1. My hairdresser is dead. My dermatologist too. I’m too scared to get in touch with my nail tech, and she hasn’t posted on her Instagram page in three months. Since I moved fifteen thousand kilometres away from Zimbabwe, my glam squad has been falling apart spectacularly, and like

MY HAIRDRESSER IS DEAD Read More »

Published in Issue 63.2: Spring 2024 1. My hairdresser is dead. My dermatologist too. I’m too scared to get in touch with my nail tech, and she hasn’t posted on her Instagram page in three months. Since I moved fifteen thousand kilometres away from Zimbabwe, my glam squad has been falling apart spectacularly, and like

Cover image of Caroline New Harper's "A History of Half-Birds" set against a green-blue background

Learning “how / to make a house of our ruin”: A Review of Caroline Harper New’s A History of Half-Birds

“What would any of us do / if freed?”  So asks Caroline Harper New in her debut collection A History of Half-Birds, winner of the 2023 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry. The poems here, both intimate and inquisitive, both personal and public, seethe with life in all its myriad forms: carob seeds “so consistently shaped

Learning “how / to make a house of our ruin”: A Review of Caroline Harper New’s A History of Half-Birds Read More »

“What would any of us do / if freed?”  So asks Caroline Harper New in her debut collection A History of Half-Birds, winner of the 2023 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry. The poems here, both intimate and inquisitive, both personal and public, seethe with life in all its myriad forms: carob seeds “so consistently shaped

An image of a train station in the dark.

Four Incidents in the Night

1.  I’ve been invited to lead a creative nonfiction workshop. The fee is generous, so I accept. It will take place at Red River Gorge in Eastern Kentucky, roughly two hours away from my home. Perhaps because it’s twilight, I’m confused by the facility: a stone mountain rising from the river with small apartments wedged

Four Incidents in the Night Read More »

1.  I’ve been invited to lead a creative nonfiction workshop. The fee is generous, so I accept. It will take place at Red River Gorge in Eastern Kentucky, roughly two hours away from my home. Perhaps because it’s twilight, I’m confused by the facility: a stone mountain rising from the river with small apartments wedged

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