April feels as though it’s come in gone in a flash (though we did make appearances at the Orcas Island Literary Festival and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books), but we’re taking time out to share what ZYZZYVA recommends this month—a roundup of the works we’ve been reading, watching, and listening to: Josh Korwin, Graphic Designer: “If you didn’t have the physical remains of the past, the question would be whether it existed.” 2018’s 306 Hollywood (directed by Elan & Jonathan Bogarín), billed as a “magical realist documentary,” is otherworldly, yet perfectly ordinary. On the surface, the film revolves around the life and […]
Month: April 2019
‘Little Key’ by Joshua Rivkin: National Poetry Month
by Zack Ravas
April represents National Poetry Month, intended as a way to spread awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. To celebrate, each week we will be taking a look back at ZYZZYVA’s recent and distant past to share some choice selections. For our final installment, we present “Little Key” by Joshua Rivkin from Issue No. 103: Hopes are shy birds flying at a great distance, seldom reached by the best of guns, Audubon wrote in his journal thinking not of the hawk or the wren but of course the sparrow. An animal throat untwists the shadow of your name. Song replying […]
‘Instructions for a Funeral’ by David Means: A Location of Deeper Grace
by Arianna Casabonne
David Means’ latest collection, Instructions for a Funeral (208 pages; FSG), further secures his position as a standout writer of short fiction. Featuring Means’ customary idiosyncratic style, with sentences that span halfway down the page—or more—the book’s prose takes you on a trek, one that demands complete attention from the reader, but repays that attention. Through his dense, carefully crafted sentences, Means transports us through time and place, interweaving action with his characters’ inner ruminations and flashbacks, and in the process touching on the most tender and enigmatic parts of existence. In a section titled “Confessions,” the author discusses what […]
‘Lost Boy’ by Matthew Dickman: National Poetry Month
by Matthew Dickman
April represents National Poetry Month, intended as a way to spread awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. To celebrate, each week we will be taking a look back at ZYZZYVA’s recent and distant past to share some choice selections. For our fourth installment, we present “Lost Boy” by Matthew Dickman from Issue No.108: I’m standing behind the 7-Eleven moving a crushed-up can around with my foot. I’m maybe twelve blocks away from the house I grew up in. I could walk there right now if I wanted. See who’s living there and if the house is the same or not […]
‘The Geology of Us: To be Responsible Citizen of Earth’ by Lauret Edith Savoy: ZYZZYVA No. 113
by Lauret Edith Savoy
In celebration of Earth Day, we present Lauret Edith Savoy’s essay “The Geology of Us: To be a Responsible Citizen of Earth” from Issue No. 113 in its entirety: The following is based on a February 20th talk given at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, as part of the Institute’s “Facing the Anthropocene” project. Like you, I am grappling with what it means to be a citizen of Earth. It goes without saying that we live in an unprecedented time. Human beings have become a dominant force in global environmental change, responsible for altering the world’s atmospheric, […]
‘Trump Sky Alpha’ by Mark Doten: President Troll
by Zack Ravas
For many Americans, the phrase “The Man with His Finger on the Button” has never registered as so ominous and disturbing as with a President as ill-tempered and braggadocios as Donald Trump in the White House. As Mark Doten’s latest novel, Trump Sky Alpha (288 pages; Graywolf Press), opens, those fears are realized when a crippling cyber-attack on America’s infrastructure prompts President Trump to unleash the country’s nuclear arsenal upon its perceived enemies. “The loss of life, it’s always tragic,” Trump intones from his massive zeppelin-like fortress, the titular Trump Sky Alpha. “But it’s been incredible. The results that we’ve […]
‘Midnight, Talking about our Exes’ by Ada Limón: National Poetry Month
by Ada Limón
April represents National Poetry Month, intended as a way to spread awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. To celebrate, each week we will be taking a look back at ZYZZYVA’s recent and distant past to share some choice selections. For our third installment, we present “Midnight, Talking about our Exes” by Ada Limón from ZYZZYVA No. 94: The sun is still down and maybe even downer. Two owls, one white and one large-eared, dive into a nothingness that is a field, night-beast in the swoop-down, (the way we all have to make a living). Let’s be owls tonight, stay […]
‘Bright Stain’ by Francesca Bell: A Universe of Pain
by Meryl Natchez
Francesca Bell’s first book of poetry, Bright Stain (104 pages; Red Hen Press), reflects a dark universe in which sexual pleasure and pain are intricately linked. There are bright moments of delight, but few without an aftertaste. This debut collection is impressive for it’s distinctive voice and pungent imagery. Many of the poems deal with the jolts of adolescent sexual awakening, its heat and surprise and terror, and Bell is not afraid of putting both her vulnerability and hunger on display: By fourteen, I had transformed, body gone from tight-fisted to extravagant… No blouse would button over my excess. Nothing […]
‘My Madness is My Love Toward Mankind’ by Devon Walker-Figueroa: National Poetry Month
by Devon Walker-Figueroa
April represents National Poetry Month, intended as a way to spread awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. To celebrate, each weeek we will be taking a look back at ZYZZYVA’s recent and distant past to share some choice selections. For our second installment, we present “My Madness is My Love Toward Mankind” by Devon Walker-Figueroa from ZYZZYVA No. 112: For Nijinsky People are mistakes and I do not want to commit any. Opinions are in me. God is in me. More than anything, immobility is an invented thing. I have two ends and they are both on fire. Because […]
‘Little Boy’ by Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Life as an Endless Novel
by Casey Jong
“And so do I return to the monologue of my life seen as an endless novel.” Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Little Boy (179 pages; Doubleday) is aptly self-identified as “unapologetically unclassifiable” on its jacket copy, and the poet Billy Collins called it a “torrent of consciousness” in his own review. Both descriptions are fitting for the short but powerful work by the now 100-year-old Ferlinghetti. Little Boy begins as a rather fast-paced novel, narrated in the third person, based on Ferlinghetti’s childhood. It tells the story of Little Boy, who was raised by his Aunt Emily, later was moved to an orphanage, and […]
‘The Altruists’ by Andrew Ridker: The Good Life
by Katie O'Neill
Andrew Ridker’s first novel, The Altruists (308 pages; Viking), follows a middle-class family, the Alters, as they struggle with the impact of unexpected wealth. Ridker is merciless in skewering each member of the family, and nearly every aspect of modern culture, from campus identity politics and the queer dating scene to poorly planned foreign aid missions. The novel’s wickedly dark sense of humor combines with a complex plot to create a compelling debut. The story centers around Arthur Alter, a rapidly aging, untenured professor at a middling St. Louis university who is close to defaulting on the mortgage for his […]
‘Astray’ by John Sibley Williams: National Poetry Month
by Zack Ravas
April represents National Poetry Month, intended as a way to spread awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. To celebrate, each week we will be taking a look back at ZYZZYVA’s recent and distant past to share some choice selections. To begin the month, we present John Sibley Williams’ poem “Astray” from ZYZZYVA No. 112:A neighborhood gone missing. Only the torn electrical tape that held it together remains of the cul-de-sac where most of us learned to drive in circles. No bedroom windows left for songbirds to strike each morning or streets made of tin foil or walls of […]