A feature of Bruce Bond’s immense talent is his poetic economy. What he is able to articulate or suggest in a few lines requires paragraphs of exposition, a feature he shares with other truly great poets. At a recent reading, Bond briefly discussed his training as a musician, and thus a partial explanation for the elusiveness of his poetry was provided. They have a rhythm and musical sonority that propels many of them, investing their already laden words with a further force. In his latest collection, For the Lost Cathedral (84 pages; LSU Press), the poems run a gamut of […]
‘The Most Thrilling Terms’: ‘Nabokov in America’ by Robert Roper
by Sam Shuler
Speaking about what he refused to characterize as his personal fame, Nabokov once told an interviewer, “Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name.” However, in the face of what the author and his family called “Hurricane Lolita,” Nabokov remained personally obscure only because he was intent on doing so. Yet all the while the near mythical dimension of his persona grew around his unwillingness to appear in public, and because of his pithy, self-orchestrated, and tightly managed interviews, which tantalized but revealed little. Appearing in a candid television interview once (and […]
Outside and Inside the Revolution All at Once: ‘Mrs. Engels’ by Gavin McCrea
by Allison Rodriguez
In his first novel, Gavin McCrea accesses the intricacies of Marx and Engel’s Communist revolution through the ordinary magic of fiction. Mrs. Engels (Catapult; 368 pages) explores the subtleties of a historic movement through the vantage of Lizzie Burns, Frederick Engels’ longtime companion and eventual wife. Lizzie, an illiterate Irish woman, is both an outsider and part of Frederick’s inner circle in London—at once the closest to the proletariat and the furthest from Marx and Engels’ ideals. Her position allows the story’s perspective to refreshingly shift from observing Engels and Marx’s work life and ideals to registering the domestic decorum […]
ZYZZYVA Interview Series: John Freeman
by editor
John Freeman (whose poems were published in ZYZZYVA No. 95 and No. 101, and who is also a contributing editor) is a long-time book critic, author of How to Read a Novelist, and the former editor of Granta. Last month, he launched a new literary journal, Freeman’s, which will publish themed issues twice a year. The first issue features work from Louise Erdrich, Barry Lopez, Haruki Murakami, Dave Eggers, Alexander Hemon, Anne Carson, Helen Simpson, and many more. Before a packed house at City Lights Bookstore last month, ZYZZYVA Managing Editor Oscar Villalon talked to Freeman about the journal, about […]
Upending What We Understand So as to Get to Wonder: ‘Erratic Facts’ by Kay Ryan
by Emily Luan
“The things we know / cannot be applied,” begins a poem in Kay Ryan’s new poetry collection, Erratic Facts (Grove Press, 64 pages), the first release since her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems. The former U.S. poet laureate returns with her signature narrow, rhyming poems to awaken and astonish us, to tilt us toward the underbelly of everyday observations. In the epilogue of Erratic Facts, Ryan notes: erratic: (n) Geol. A boulder or the like carried by glacial ice and deposited some distance form its place of origin This idea of displacement—a separation of […]
‘Infelicities of Style’: 2015 Best American Essays Notable, Issue No. 102
by Laura Esther Wolfson
Concluding the roster of work in ZYZZYVA that earned eleven Notables from the Best American series this year is Laura Esther Wolfson’s “Infelicities of Style”–one of five ZYZZYVA essays recognized as a Notable in the 2015 Best American Essays anthology. Wolfson tells the story of being a young stringer–a dance critic–for the local paper near her college. “Infelicities” is a mediation upon creating art, being excluded for one reason or the other from its creation, and a reckoning with the vagaries of fate.
Laura Esther Wolfson lives in New York City, where she works as a translator of Russian, French, and Spanish to English. Her writing has appeared in Bellingham Review, Gettysburg Review, The Rumpus, The Sun, and elsewhere; and has been repeatedly listed as Notable in Best American Essays. The following is an excerpt from “Infelicities of Style.”
[…]
Far Off the Band: A Q&A with Scott Hutchins and Octavio Solis
by Christian Kiefer
I met Scott Hutchins and Octavio Solis at a writers conference in Pebble Beach, in the center of what must soon be on record as the longest summer in California’s long, hot history. Hutchins is the author of the novel A Working Theory of Love. He is a former Truman Capote fellow in the Wallace Stegner Program at Stanford University, where he currently teaches, and his work has appeared in Story Quarterly, Five Chapters, The Rumpus, the New York Times, Catamaran Literary Reader, and Esquire, among other places. And Solis is a playwright and director. His work has been mounted […]
‘Traffic’: 2015 Best American Essays Notable, Issue No. 101
by Jim Krusoe
Jim Krusoe’s short but powerful “Traffic” is the second essay from Issue No. 101 to receive a Notable—in this case, from the 2015 Best American Essays anthology. In only four or so pages, Krusoe lays out a childhood memory and takes it apart, seeing clearly a truth about his parents (and a car accident involving a child) that he sensed but hadn’t articulated before.
Krusoe, who lives in Southern California, is the author of the novels “Parsifal” (Tin House), “Girl Factory” (Tin House) and “Iceland” (Dalkey Archive), as well as books of poetry and story collections. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund. The following is “Traffic” in its entirety.
[…]
‘A Daughter’s Letter to Tamsen Donner’: 2015 Best American Nonrequired Reading Notable, Issue No. 101
by Jill Logan
Jill Logan’s essay, “A Daughter’s Letter to Tamsen Donner,” is one of two essays in Issue No. 101 recognized as a Notable by the Best American series this year—by the 2015 Best American Nonrequired Reading, to be exact. A conversation of sorts between Logan and one of the members of the ill-fated Donner Party, “A Daughter’s Letter” is a humorous but insightful meditation on family.
Logan, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, has had fiction published in Meridian, Bellingham Review, Crazyhorse, Quarterly West, Michigan Quarterly Review, Cimarron Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Santa Cruz, where she is working on a novel and a short story collection about her native Oklahoma. The following is an excerpt of “A Daughter’s Letter to Tamsen Donner.”
[…]
‘Bank Repos for Sale,’ 2015 Best American Short Stories & Best American Nonrequired Reading Notable, Issue No. 101
by Elena Mauli Shapiro
Elena Mauli Shapiro’s story “Bank Repos for Sale,” which appeared in Issue No. 101, accounts for two of the eleven Notables earned by our contributors from the Best American series this year—having been recognized by both Best American Short Stories and Best American Nonrequired Reading. It is a darkly comic story set in an America that, as its title suggest, couldn’t care less about a skyrocketing stock market or the newest app.
Shapiro is the author of two novels, “In the Red” and “13 rue Therese” (both published by Little, Brown). This is her second story published by ZYZZYVA. Her story “Commuting” was published in Issue No. 94. The following is an excerpt from “Bank Repos for Sale.”
[…]
In the Face of Absurdity, Macro & Micro: ‘Cries for Help, Various’ by Padgett Powell
by Sam Shuler
Of the various genres travestied by the entertainment industry, perhaps comedy has become the most befouled. With a few notable exceptions, inane millennial hi-jinx, “awkward” situations and encounters, and mundanely quirky characters flit across American television and computer screens with an unsurprising steadiness. In the face of this, a writer like Padgett Powell is of the greatest importance, as reminder of what comedy, specifically literary comedy, can be. Wry, strange, and with a sense of tragedy only partially concealed by the stories’ peculiar and surrealistic narratives, Cries for Help, Various (200 pages; Catapult) exhibit’s a comedy which is still in […]
‘Hold On’: 2015 Best American Short Stories Notable, Issue No. 100
by Scott O'Connor
Scott O’Connor’s “Hold On” is the third work of fiction from our Issue No. 100 to be named a Notable in the 2015 Best American Short Stories anthology. It is a story that movingly probes a fear specific to anybody living near a fault zone (which, in the U.S., means anybody living anywhere on the West Coast): namely, having to endure what an earthquake can wreak.
Scott O’Connor is the author of the novels “Half World” (Simon & Schuster) and “Untouchable” (Tyrus Books), winner of a Barnes & Noble Discover Award, and the novella “Among Wolves.” He lives in Los Angeles. The following is an excerpt from “Hold On.”
[…]