Death and Hope from ‘The Heart of Darkness’
J. Chester Johnson’s book, Damaged Heritage: The Elaine Race Massacre and a Story of Reconciliation, brings fresh air and a fresh methodology to the ‘difficult discussions’ circulating today in America about race, racism, and racial reconciliation.
The Social Virtues Series
Recent Posts
Of Beasts & Feminism: An Interview // Review of FABLESQUE by Anna Maria Hong ~ Sarah Audsley
Writing within the constraint of a bestiary—a descriptive or anecdotal treatise on various real or mythical kinds of animals, especially a medieval work with a moralizing tone—Hong applies pressure through a feminist re-interpretation on traditional Greek myths, common Western fables, and personified animal tales.
Everything in Salt Water
Baptized at ten given too soon a clean heart a shiny new spirit so much left of me to make filthy. When I turned teenager my mother tells me to wash...
Masks: Past. Present. Pandemic.
“The human face is, after all, nothing more nor less than a mask,” Agatha Christie said. Our face reveals our true feelings—curiosity, excitement, doubt, disdain—or conceals them.
We put on different faces in different situations, in different company. We perform.
A Review of Jennifer Militello’s THE PACT
If you are someone like me who usually – but not always – closes her correspondence to friends and family with the word “love,” Jennifer Militello’s “The Pact” (Tupelo Press) might make you want to think about what it means when you use – or withhold – that word.
Four Poems
As they were lowering/his coffin in to the ground/beside my mother’s grave/where the grass had regrown–
Tender the River: An Interview with Matt W. Miller
In Matt Miller’s fourth book, Tender the River (Texas A&M Press 2021), Miller shows us the grace of listening and how it can shape and change you, as a river does land. The collection is an homage to Miller’s hometown of Lowell, MA, following a narrative of its multifaceted histories, including the geological, economic, social, and personal archives of the place.
Welcome Stephen Cramer as our new Assistant Poetry Editor!
The GMR is thrilled to announce that Stephen Cramer will be joining us as Assistant Poetry Editor. We look forward to working even more closely with Stephen.
But Then I Turned Into My Evil Twin: Kindness and Ecstasy
“I am so desperate for that vaccine/I’d knock down an old person/to get it,” someone once said.
Poemed
sky-blue-prison/prism of spin-back-earth
A Review of NO MORE TIME by Greg Delanty
Have you heard of the scurfpea, quagga, aye-aye, or the northern gastric frog? Greg Delanty’s new book of poems, No More Time, is filled with such exotic creatures, and more familiar ones, too. In some cases, they are thriving. Many others are either extinct or endangered, facts weighted with an awareness of humans’ role in their plight.
Two Poems
The children press their noses/to our bumpy, flawless etrog./They hold it tightly, inhale its zesty scent,