Archive Archives – Page 8 of 15

Three Poems for Inauguration Day: ‘I Used to Be Much Much Darker’ by Francisco X. Alarcón

by me

January 20, 2017

Posted on January 20, 2017 (January 19, 2017) by me

On the occasion of Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day, we would like to share with you three poems from our early volumes—poems we believe speak to values that will be very much challenged by the incoming administration.

“I Used to Be Much Much Darker” by Francisco X. Alarcón (who died last January) appeared in ZYZZVA No. 3 (Fall 1985). A playful even jovial poem, it tells, in English and in Spanish, of the speaker’s love of self, of reveling in his “darkness”—something others would deem unworthy of celebration. Indeed, as the speaker plangently notes: “but anyway/ up here ‘dark’/ is only for/ the ashes:/ the stuff lonely nights/ are made of.” Yet it’s the poem’s indefatigable cheerfulness—could we even call it optimism?—that remains with the reader.

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Three Poems for Inauguration Day: ‘Snake’ by Sherman Alexie

by me

Posted on January 20, 2017 (January 19, 2017) by me

“Snake” by Sherman Alexie appeared in ZYZZYVA No. 77 (Fall 2006). In the poem, a driver recounts the accidental running over of a bull snake. But what is really being recounted is how the speaker takes responsibility for the creature’s body, and how respecting the dignity of others, and holding oneself to account for actions that affect them, is akin to holiness.

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Three Poems for Inauguration Day: ‘Justice Without Passion’ by Jane Hirshfield

by me

Posted on January 20, 2017 (January 19, 2017) by me

“Justice Without Passion” by Jane Hirshfield appeared in ZYZZYVA No. 12 (Winter 1987). In the poem, the speaker observes a friend’s son practicing the piano, noting “he is like a soldier or a saint: blank-faced, and given wholly/ to an obedience he does not need to understand.” Perhaps, the poem suggests, justice rests in understanding when obedience is merited, that justice requires us to be aware if we are only playing “for playing’s sake.”

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‘Poem for Noguchi’ by Matthew Zapruder, ZYZZYVA No. 108, Winter Issue

by me

December 22, 2016

Posted on December 22, 2016 (December 20, 2016) by me

Matthew Zapruder is editor-at-large for Wave Books, the poetry editor for The New York Times Magazine, and an associate professor in the MFA program at Saint Mary’s College. Next August, his book Why Poetry? will be published by Ecco. Two of his poems—”Poem for Noguchi” and “Stari Trg”—appear in the new issue of ZYZZYVA, which you can get here.

The following is “Poem for Noguchi” in its entirety. You can hear Zapruder read from his work, along with ZYZZYVA contributors Kathleen Alcott, Scott O’Connor, and Ella Martinsen Gorham, at the Winter Issue Celebration at Diesel in Oakland on Thursday, January 26.

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‘Revision’ by Mar Colón-Margolies, ZYZZYVA No. 108, Winter Issue

by me

December 20, 2016

Posted on December 20, 2016 (December 20, 2016) by me

Mar Colón-Margolies is a former editor at Nation Books. Her reporting has appeared in The Nation, the Columbia Journalism Review online, and on Rhode Island Public Radio. Her story “Revision” appears in the new issue of ZYZZYVA.

Set in Texas, “Revision” is the tale of a journalist on assignment writing about that state’s draconian abortion laws. In the course of his work he faces questions of professional and even personal ethics as he re-connects with a past love. The following is an excerpt, but you can read the story in its entirety by getting a copy here. (Also, Mar Colón-Margolies will be reading from her work at ZYZZYVA’s Winter Issue Launch at Greenlight Bookstore on January 12.)

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Solidarity: A Letter from the Editors

by me

November 17, 2016

Posted on November 17, 2016 (May 15, 2018) by me

Friends, In general, we keep partisanship and day-to-day politics out of the journal. We hope we can provide a space for thoughtful contemplation of all aspects of contemporary life through art—a way of thinking which, while engaged with the political, is not political in its mode and does its work well outside the 24-hour news-cycle. But we are now compelled to speak to you directly about this election. On November 8, this nation succumbed to the greatest threat that faces any democracy: that a sizable number of its people may find democracy itself—with all its imperfections—too unpalatable, and choose instead […]

‘Artificial Islands’ by Earle McCartney, ZYZZYVA No. 107, Fall Issue

by me

October 12, 2016

Posted on October 12, 2016 (October 11, 2016) by me

Originally from south New Jersey, Earle McCartney is a San Francisco writer. The recipient of the Joseph Henry Jackson Award in 2013, his stories “Sawmill” and “Rhizomes” appeared in ZYZZYVA Issues No. 96 and No. 101, respectively. His newest story, “Artificial Islands,” can be found in the Fall issue.

As with McCartney’s last two stories in ZYZZYVA, “Artificial Islands” beautifully captures people in close relationship to the natural world—in this case, it’s the ocean, as an adolescent girl goes fishing for sharks with her older brother, her father, and a family friend. The following is an excerpt from the story. You can read in its entirety by getting a copy here. (Note: Earle McCartney will be part of the lineup for our ZYZZYVA Fall All-Stars event at Litcrawl.)

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‘Kabul’ by Fatima Bhutto, ZYZZYVA No. 107, Fall Issue

by me

October 5, 2016

Posted on October 5, 2016 (October 7, 2016) by me

Fatima Bhutto, photo by Paul Wetherell

Fatima Bhutto is the author of several books, including the memoir Songs of Blood and Sword (Nation Books) and the novel The Shadow of the Crescent Moon (Penguin Press). Her work has also appeared in the New Statesmen, the Daily Beast, the Guardian, and other publications. She lives in Karachi, Pakistan.

Her story “Kabul” appears in the Fall issue. The tale of Sheryar, a feckless young man, and Soraya, his pregnant—and even younger—lover, Bhutto’s story casts a cold (though not unsympathetic) eye on people trapped by circumstances seemingly beyond their power to change. The following is an excerpt from her story, but it can be read in full in our Fall issue, which you can order here.

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‘Big Boss Bitch’ by Adrienne Celt, ZYZZYVA No. 107, Fall Issue

by me

September 26, 2016

Posted on September 26, 2016 (October 7, 2016) by me

Adrienne Celt’s first novel, The Daughters (W.W. Norton/Liveright), won the 2015 PEN Southwest Book Award and was named a Best Book of the Year by NPR. Her writing has been recognized by the PEN/O. Henry Prize, and her fiction has appeared in Esquire, The Kenyon Review, Epoch, Prairie Schooner, and Ecotone, among other places. She also publishes a webcomic at loveamongthelampreys.com.

Her work of fiction, “Big Boss Bitch,” which she describes as “my horror story about the first female president,” appears in the Winter issue. The “horror,” by the way, isn’t in the fact of having a female president, but what happens to said female president. The following is an excerpt, but if you’d like to read Celt’s story in its entirety, you can get a copy here.

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‘Portrait of the Alcoholic with Relapse Fantasy’ by Kaveh Akbar, ZYZZYVA No. 107, Fall Issue

by me

September 21, 2016

Posted on September 21, 2016 (October 7, 2016) by me

Kaveh Akbar founded and edits Divedapper. His chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic, will be published in January by Sibling Rivalry Press, and his first full-length collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, is forthcoming from Alice James Books next fall. He is the recipient of a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.

Three of Akbar’s poems appear in the Winter issue, including this one, “Portrait of the Alcoholic with Relapse Fantasy.” We provide the poem in full, but you can read Akbar’s other poems—”Against Idleness” and “You Came to Feel the Fur But Didn’t Expect the Snout” in Issue No. 107, which you can buy here.

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‘Stealth’ by Etan Nechin, ZYZZYVA No. 106, Spring/Summer

by editor

July 14, 2016

Posted on July 14, 2016 (July 5, 2016) by editor

Etan Nechin is an Israeli-born writer currently living in New York. His work has appeared in such publications as Gravel Magazine, MonkeyBicycle, Entropy, and the Huffington Post, and several other publications in Hebrew. “Stealth” marks his First Time in Print for fiction in English.

Set at the beginning of the Persian Gulf War of the early ’90s, “Stealth” is narrated by a school boy living among a community of artists in Israel. Amid the gas masks, safety drills at school, and trading of U.S. military-themed bubble gum cards, there’s the everyday (and comic) life of a child trying to make sense of the world and his place in it. The following is an excerpt of “Stealth.” You can read the story in its entirety in Issue No. 106, which you can order here.

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‘Hotel Bar’ by Ruth Madievsky, ZYZZYVA No. 106, Spring/Summer

by editor

July 12, 2016

Posted on July 12, 2016 (July 1, 2016) by editor

Ruth Madievsky is the author of the collection Emergency Brake (Tavern Books). She is also a doctoral student at the University of Southern California’s School of Pharmacy, and a research assistant in an HIV clinic in Los Angeles.

Two of her latest poems appear in Issue No. 106: “Wind” and “Hotel Bar.” (Madievsky has been published in ZYZZYVA before. Her poem “Poem for Spring” appeared in No. 103.) Her work, as described by Maggie Millner in an interview with Madievsky, forces “a dialogue between her romantic and clinical inclinations and suggesting the body’s dangerous propensity for betrayal.” “Hotel Bar” could be seen as an example of that. Here it is in its entirety. You can read that poem and “Wind,” too, in Issue No. 106, which you can order here.

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