193 Search Results Found For: “lisa ampleman”

Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: This hybrid, elliptical piece draws from the language of fairy tales to illuminate the experience of adolescence (perhaps; in part), as one character is “a little girl on some days and a young woman on others.” With references to violence and the body—as well as an allusion to the environment in …

Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: In this poem—from her series imagining different cabinet members who preside over particular parts of the pysche—Stephanie Ellis Schlaifer scrutinizes the challenges of speech, in particular where our words come from. In spare lines, carefully lineated, we see the results of a divine gift of fire: Not so much “let there …

[Editors’ note: We’re hitting the pause button on our miCRo feature for the steamy vacation month of July, so this is our last piece until August. See you then!] Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: James Davis May’s carefully crafted poem below takes the abstract studies of ornithology and gender studies, and makes them particular: A singular …

  Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: The prose poem was born in rebellion, from surrealistic parents. It grew up nourished by juxtapositions, associative movement, a direct statement followed by a non sequitur. It studied intermediate lyrical techniques and the controversy between ragged-right or force-justified text in graduate school. And here, in Maureen Seaton’s hands, it takes …

  Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: We’re big fans of ghost stories here at The Cincinnati Review; Assistant Editor Molly Reid explained that well in a blog post last fall, highlighting stories from issue 14.2 that fell into that category. Since then, we’ve also featured another sort of ghost story on miCRo, Katie Cortese’s “Neat Freak,” …

  Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: As I prepared this post for publication a few weeks ago, I wondered if this poem would seem too timely on its publication date. Kelle Groom’s “River of Grass” includes specific details that remind us of the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, but—of course—in the …

  Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: Becky Hagenston’s “Star Girl” feels like a cousin to another piece in our miCRo series, Doris Cheng’s “Earthling,” a story that features a teenager who thinks she might be an extraterrestrial. In Becky Hagenston’s hands, the concern with aliens takes a different turn: The “Star Girl” of the title was …

  Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: What does a English Renaissance–era writer have to do with contemporary race relations? In this poem, Joshua Kryah brings together a reconsideration of the playwright and poet Ben Jonson, who once killed a man in a duel, and a contemporary scene in which a neighbor with ready racist comments also …

  Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: Today’s miCRo is a lively poem with surprising turns of diction and syntax, as nouns mutate into verbs and adjectives. As the title indicates, the poem is aware of itself as poem but isn’t limited by that conceit; it’s not a proverbial noisy gong but an energetic dance. Holy mackerel, …

Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: In Katie Cortese’s deft hands, this story juxtaposes the greatest kinds of loss with the mundane details of a life lived in the aftermath. Medieval torture shares a paragraph with the limitations of automatic doors at a gym, and “Windex and elbow-length rubber gloves” show up near the memory of a funeral. …