Winter 2012 – Michigan Quarterly Review

Winter 2012

“Hill,” by Margaret Reges

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Tangled against the river the red-gray thump of the feet of deer in the half-frozen mud and the sear of dry branches torn from the living, a yellow-orange strip of barkless wood on the trunk and the tender wet where the branch was torn crystallizing in the cold, and trees like a mesh of black oil.

“Hill,” by Margaret Reges Read More »

Tangled against the river the red-gray thump of the feet of deer in the half-frozen mud and the sear of dry branches torn from the living, a yellow-orange strip of barkless wood on the trunk and the tender wet where the branch was torn crystallizing in the cold, and trees like a mesh of black oil.

MQR 52:1 | Winter 2013

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We begin 2013 with our first redesign in decades. Take a look, and read Ann Fabian on the sad life of pioneering herpetologist Mary Cynthia Dickerson and Zhanna Vaynberg on growing up between cultures, along with fiction by Cody Peace Adams, Kim Adrian, Morris Collins, Jen Fawkes, Stephanie Friedman, and William Kelly Woolfitt; a review of Witold Gombrowicz by Piotr Florczyk; and poetry by Marianne Boruch.

From the Desert Wars,” is a special section of startling and deeply felt poetry written by American soldiers fresh from Iraq and Afghanistan,“trying to make sense of things,” including work by Benjamin Busch, Clint Garner, Bruce Lack, Hugh Martin, and Patrick Whalen.

MQR 52:1 | Winter 2013 Read More »

We begin 2013 with our first redesign in decades. Take a look, and read Ann Fabian on the sad life of pioneering herpetologist Mary Cynthia Dickerson and Zhanna Vaynberg on growing up between cultures, along with fiction by Cody Peace Adams, Kim Adrian, Morris Collins, Jen Fawkes, Stephanie Friedman, and William Kelly Woolfitt; a review of Witold Gombrowicz by Piotr Florczyk; and poetry by Marianne Boruch.

From the Desert Wars,” is a special section of startling and deeply felt poetry written by American soldiers fresh from Iraq and Afghanistan,“trying to make sense of things,” including work by Benjamin Busch, Clint Garner, Bruce Lack, Hugh Martin, and Patrick Whalen.

“You Owe Me” Selected for 2012 Best American Essays

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The children I write with die, no matter how much I love them, no matter how creative they are, no matter how many poems they have written, or how much they want to live. They die of diseases with unpronounceable names, of rhabdomyosarcoma or pilocytic astrocytoma, of cancers rarely heard of in the world at large, of cancers that are often cured once, but then turn up again somewhere else: in their lungs, their stomachs, their sinuses, their bones, their brains. While undergoing their own treatments, my students watch one friend after another lose legs, cough up blood, and enter a hospital room they never come out of again.

“You Owe Me” Selected for 2012 Best American Essays Read More »

The children I write with die, no matter how much I love them, no matter how creative they are, no matter how many poems they have written, or how much they want to live. They die of diseases with unpronounceable names, of rhabdomyosarcoma or pilocytic astrocytoma, of cancers rarely heard of in the world at large, of cancers that are often cured once, but then turn up again somewhere else: in their lungs, their stomachs, their sinuses, their bones, their brains. While undergoing their own treatments, my students watch one friend after another lose legs, cough up blood, and enter a hospital room they never come out of again.

“The King of Hispaniola,” by Chidelia Edochie

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fiction by Chidelia Edochie

I spent that Christmas Eve with my schoolmate Bibi and her parents at the National Palace, comparing the sizes of presents and our thirteen-year-old breasts with the other daughters of cabinet members and businessmen. All over Port-au-Prince younger children were taking off their shoes and filling them with hay so that Papa Noël could lade them with gifts as they slept. In the palace chandeliers gleamed down on us, everyone so drunk off of anisette punch that the whole place smelled of sugar and rum and salt from their sweat.

Bibi’s father, Mr. Mesadieu, kept an arm around President Duvalier as if they were brothers. The whole country called him Baby Doc—not fondly—and I’d heard Mr. Mesadieu refer to him as le bébé idiot. Our textbooks said that the Duvalier family had been the savior of Haiti, though our teacher often let it slip that he found the extravagance of their lifestyle distasteful. But I knew that Bibi liked him.

“The King of Hispaniola,” by Chidelia Edochie Read More »

fiction by Chidelia Edochie

I spent that Christmas Eve with my schoolmate Bibi and her parents at the National Palace, comparing the sizes of presents and our thirteen-year-old breasts with the other daughters of cabinet members and businessmen. All over Port-au-Prince younger children were taking off their shoes and filling them with hay so that Papa Noël could lade them with gifts as they slept. In the palace chandeliers gleamed down on us, everyone so drunk off of anisette punch that the whole place smelled of sugar and rum and salt from their sweat.

Bibi’s father, Mr. Mesadieu, kept an arm around President Duvalier as if they were brothers. The whole country called him Baby Doc—not fondly—and I’d heard Mr. Mesadieu refer to him as le bébé idiot. Our textbooks said that the Duvalier family had been the savior of Haiti, though our teacher often let it slip that he found the extravagance of their lifestyle distasteful. But I knew that Bibi liked him.

MQR 51:1 | Winter 2012

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Julian Levinson translates and comments on Moshe-Leyb Halpern; Derek Mong considers English as a second language; Natania Rosenfeld muses on her mother-in-law and Louise Bourgeois; Stefanie Weisman goes in search of E. B. White.

Fiction by Alan Cheuse (with help – a lot of help – from Herman Melville), Bernardine Connelly, Chidalia Edochie, and Peter Levine.

Poetry by Nicolas Born, Victoria Chang, Moshe-Leyb Halpern, A. Van Jordan, Nick Lantz, Margaret Reges, Brian Swann, and Ann Marie Thornburg.

Plus: A review by Raymond McDaniel of Maggie Nelson’s “The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning.”

MQR 51:1 | Winter 2012 Read More »

Julian Levinson translates and comments on Moshe-Leyb Halpern; Derek Mong considers English as a second language; Natania Rosenfeld muses on her mother-in-law and Louise Bourgeois; Stefanie Weisman goes in search of E. B. White.

Fiction by Alan Cheuse (with help – a lot of help – from Herman Melville), Bernardine Connelly, Chidalia Edochie, and Peter Levine.

Poetry by Nicolas Born, Victoria Chang, Moshe-Leyb Halpern, A. Van Jordan, Nick Lantz, Margaret Reges, Brian Swann, and Ann Marie Thornburg.

Plus: A review by Raymond McDaniel of Maggie Nelson’s “The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning.”

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