Associate Editor Caitlin Doyle: In “Telling,” May-lee Chai explores how the stories passed down in a family can traverse the devastating intergenerational effects of domestic violence within multiple narratives that portray the aggressor—in this case, the speaker’s grandfather—as both a positive figure and an abuser. As “Telling” unfolds, we learn that the descendants of this …
Editorial Assistant Cara Dees: Alessandra Lynch’s third poetry collection, Daylily Called It a Dangerous Moment (Alice James Books, 2017), navigates the trauma of surviving rape, the insatiability and pervasive cruelty of rape culture, and the speaker’s search for a voice as she insists on her own survival and story, to “nearly convinc[e] myself recursiveness / …
Associate Editor Molly Reid: In Angie Ellis’s story, the narrator insists on protagonist Rosemary’s well-being through the use of a passive-aggressive negation (“Rosemary does not avoid her reflection in the hall mirror when she passes. She is not afraid to be disappointed. She is, please understand, not so shallow.”) But this technique doesn’t flatten the …
Assistant Editor Jess Jelsma Masterton: For me, much of the pleasure of the lyric essay comes from what Sven Birkerts dubs “counterpointed perspectives” in his craft book The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again.
Associate Editor Caitlin Doyle: As spring approaches and new books of poetry make their way into print, many of them by first-time authors, we’re abuzz in the CR office about debut collections from the recent past that have held us in thrall. In celebration of the season, I’m happy to highlight The Taxidermist’s Cut by …
Associate Editor Caitlin Doyle: In “Reorient,” Diana Khoi Nguyen explores the dissonance between surfaces and interiors: “I carry my body, but not like a briefcase. My body takes two cases: Vietnamese American. You can see one, but not the other.” Nguyen examines how occupying a body viewed as “other” forces a continual reorientation of self …
When we mail out each issue to contributors, we encourage them to let us know if they’d like to expand the context for their work in our pages, via our blog. For Issue 15.2, we’ve heard from several writers; the latest is Sophie Klahr, who’s interested in explaining the impetus behind her two poems in …
