From MR CHANCE
in Australia a recent production of Merchant of Venice changed the ending –/ what have I done?
The Social Virtues Series
Recent Posts
Yolanda
Yolanda, the security guard, sat in a tiny chair behind a school desk at the entrance of the rundown building on West 181st Street that served as headquarters for The District offices. An enormous woman with breasts the size of throw pillows straining the coarse blue fabric of her uniform, she wore her hair pulled up on top of her head in a tight bun; the style fit the determined expression carved into the cool black marble of her face. She hated her job, and probably was surly to everyone, but Mimi took it personally, because Mimi took everything personally.
Realpolitik
I thought talking politics with the manager at the Salt Cavern would be safe—I mean, salt therapy much? But, turns out, Gary had been held up when he worked as a liquor store cashier and had been backing gun rights legislation by way of NRA donations and bumper sticker activism ever since.
The Wonder
We’re sitting idle, another day of no skin, / no face up-turned. It’s not that rain streams us
Why Write? #11: Suzanne Wise
Alice Fulton has said of Suzanne Wise's work that "it bristles with the struggle to define and comprehend the absurd component of evil and despair." Here in her "Why Write?" piece she turns toward the "monastic devotion" that it takes to write, to look Reality...
GMR Turns 25!
We're thrilled to announce our upcoming 25th Anniversary Retrospective issue, out later this spring. This issue will celebrate the very best poetry, interviews, and essays on poetry from the magazine’s first quarter-century. We’ll also have a special “Talk...
Why Write? #10: Vanessa Blakeslee
Fiction writer Vanessa Blakeslee's "Hospice of the Au Pair," from our Fall 2010 issue, introduces a powerful new voice in fiction. Here is the rare early writer who knows how to build compelling narrative, whose stories hit the ground running -- driven forth always by...
Why Write? #9: Anselm Berrigan
Anselm Berrigan digs irrelevance. His most recent book, Notes from Irrelevance (Wave Books, 2011), excerpted at length in our spring 2011 issue, is a sixty-five page poem that grinds its way into that space where we become irrelevant even to ourselves, our desires...
Why Write? #8: Jacob Paul
Novelist Jacob Paul's narrative gusto makes it easy to forget that he is essentially a meditative writer. Even as we're sped along by the meaty plot, exuberant comedy, and crackling dialogue, Paul's fluidly reflexive prose cycles us deeper and deeper into what can...
Why Write? #7: Tony Magistrale
A poet of place and love, Tony Magistrale's poems have large arms in which to envelope his readers. The force of this love is sometimes poignant sometimes painful, but always just right. A poet with backbone and a real heart, now that's nice. Why Write? The...
Why Write? #6: Laird Hunt
For this installment of Why Write?, novelist Laird Hunt goes global. Discussing his work with the UN; his summers in Hong Kong; the way the literary mind "bends" in Egypt, Nigeria, and elsewhere; Honda three-wheelers; Tycho Brahe; boilers; Rigborg Brockenhaus; Space...
Why Write #5: Matt Bialer
For our our fifth installment of "Why Write?" we hear from poet, photographer, painter, literary agent, and father Matt Bialer, who's spent an enormous amount of time not writing -- happily, it seems -- but also an enormous time, we suspect, contemplating this...