Winter – Michigan Quarterly Review

Winter

MQR Issue 60:1, Winter 2021

Meet Our Contributors: Issue 60:1 Winter 2021

AI (1947–2010) was an American poet. She published eight collections of poetry, including Killing Floor (1979), winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Sin (1986), winner of an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; and Vice: New and Selected Poems (1999), which won the National Book Award for […]

Meet Our Contributors: Issue 60:1 Winter 2021 Read More »

AI (1947–2010) was an American poet. She published eight collections of poetry, including Killing Floor (1979), winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Sin (1986), winner of an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; and Vice: New and Selected Poems (1999), which won the National Book Award for

“Winter Nihilism,” by Tom Luhrmann

The objects in the garden, though, / are of a different order. / Remember them. / The white bricks will sustain you / when everything else seems meaningless; / the gardening tools will take you further / than any ideology; / the flag will stand between you and despair.

“Winter Nihilism,” by Tom Luhrmann Read More »

The objects in the garden, though, / are of a different order. / Remember them. / The white bricks will sustain you / when everything else seems meaningless; / the gardening tools will take you further / than any ideology; / the flag will stand between you and despair.

Seasonal Affective Disorder: Winter in Wallace Stevens’s “Farewell to Florida”

Having consoled myself in damp pubs in London, creaked across frozen lakes in the deep freeze of Minnesota, and coughed my way through Philadelphian afternoons that could never decide between rain or sleet, I can tell you: there are many different kinds of cold. It’s something Wallace Stevens knew well. His poem, “The Snow Man,” is probably the most famous winter poem in modern poetry, laying before us a “distant glitter” and, within it, the full presence of winter’s unique nothingness.

Seasonal Affective Disorder: Winter in Wallace Stevens’s “Farewell to Florida” Read More »

Having consoled myself in damp pubs in London, creaked across frozen lakes in the deep freeze of Minnesota, and coughed my way through Philadelphian afternoons that could never decide between rain or sleet, I can tell you: there are many different kinds of cold. It’s something Wallace Stevens knew well. His poem, “The Snow Man,” is probably the most famous winter poem in modern poetry, laying before us a “distant glitter” and, within it, the full presence of winter’s unique nothingness.

Spartacus for Little Girls

* Zhanna Slor *

In the everlasting battle between book vs. movie, in this case, I would actually side with movie, since some of the writing, in my opinion, could have used a good bit of cutting. But overall, I ended up really connecting to the alternate reality she created. And not just because at least sixty percent of my dreams since adulthood for some reason involve some kind of post-apocalyptic future in which everyone must fight for survival, and therefore the world is very familiar to me, but because there is actually quite a lot of metaphorical resonance in the books. Often, this world, our world, feels to me like a longer, drawn-out Hunger Games; death fights to claim you, either through extreme weather or accident or illness or, like in the arena: murder.

Spartacus for Little Girls Read More »

* Zhanna Slor *

In the everlasting battle between book vs. movie, in this case, I would actually side with movie, since some of the writing, in my opinion, could have used a good bit of cutting. But overall, I ended up really connecting to the alternate reality she created. And not just because at least sixty percent of my dreams since adulthood for some reason involve some kind of post-apocalyptic future in which everyone must fight for survival, and therefore the world is very familiar to me, but because there is actually quite a lot of metaphorical resonance in the books. Often, this world, our world, feels to me like a longer, drawn-out Hunger Games; death fights to claim you, either through extreme weather or accident or illness or, like in the arena: murder.

The Promised End

by Greg Schutz

According to the Weekly World News, I am writing on the verge of apocalypse and this blog post will never be read. The nineteenth of December: two days until we reach the terminus of the ancient Mayan calendar and find ourselves ushered into a future better left to the imagination of Roland Emmerich. Or Nancy Lieder. Or John of Patmos. Or whomever. Apocalypses come and go, and if some prophets, like the Revelator or Nostradamus, achieve a more lasting fame than others, it seems to have little to do with their accuracy as doomsayers. What’s worth noting about our latest onrushing apocalypse, however, is just how timely it seems.

The Promised End Read More »

by Greg Schutz

According to the Weekly World News, I am writing on the verge of apocalypse and this blog post will never be read. The nineteenth of December: two days until we reach the terminus of the ancient Mayan calendar and find ourselves ushered into a future better left to the imagination of Roland Emmerich. Or Nancy Lieder. Or John of Patmos. Or whomever. Apocalypses come and go, and if some prophets, like the Revelator or Nostradamus, achieve a more lasting fame than others, it seems to have little to do with their accuracy as doomsayers. What’s worth noting about our latest onrushing apocalypse, however, is just how timely it seems.

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