The first image we encounter in America, We Call Your Name: Poetry of Resistance and Resilience (203 pages; Sixteen Rivers Press) is that of Lady Liberty in the midst of a grey fog; it’s unclear as to whether she is receding or emerging. The editors have stated that the impetus for this anthology was a desire to help unify the country after the 2016 Presidential Election. The Trump Administration symbolizes the oppression that these poets are resisting; the collection acknowledges that the election woke up many people who had grown politically complacent. For this anthology, Sixteen Rivers Press, a shared […]
Tag: Resistance
‘Understanding, Misunderstanding, and then Sitting Down to Write’ by Andrew Tonkovich: ZYZZYVA, No. 111, Winter Issue
by editor
Andrew Tonkovich is the co-editor of the anthology “Orange County: A Literary Field Guide,” published by Heyday, and editor of the Santa Monica Review. To ring in the new year, we’re presenting in its entirety his essay “Understanding, Misunderstanding, and then Sitting Down to Write” from ZYZZYVA No. 111: The following is an edited version of the closing talk given at the Community of Writers Workshop at Squaw Valley in July, 2017. “I live in terror of not being misunderstood.” —Oscar Wilde I’m proud of at least the title of this talk, and the epigraph. If the rest of it falls […]
Letter From The Editor
by Laura Cogan
“Literature is the question minus the answer.” —Roland Barthes “To learn which questions are unanswerable and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.” —Ursula K. LeGuin, from The Left Hand of Darkness Dear Reader, Perhaps you, like me, find yourself asking a lot from literature these days: greater solace, finer insight, deeper resonance. For me that’s led to thinking more pointedly about such expectations, and I’ve found it is useful to ask not only what literature can do to respond to current events, but also how; not just what meaning literature can […]
One Year Later: A Message to Our Readers
by Laura Cogan
Dear Readers, Today marks an anxious anniversary of sorts—grave for many reasons, but in no small part because we do not yet know the full consequences of the event we’re reflecting on. We cannot know because it is still unfolding and, whatever the effects are, we are still in the middle of it. One year ago this evening, as the presidential election results rolled in, Oscar and I texted each other. What should we do, I asked? You should write something, Oscar answered. So on November 17, we sent out a letter. We called it the Solidarity Letter, and we […]
ZYZZYVA Labor Day 2017 Playlist
by ZYZZYVA Staff
We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for the first ever ZYZZYVA Labor Day Playlist! Here you’ll find a series of songs our staff chose for their resonance in this fraught (and often emotionally exhausting) moment. Music is always an essential source of inspiration and solace, and these are some of the songs we’ll be listening to over this long weekend. We hope you may enjoy them, too, perhaps in the background of your holiday barbecue, or after the guests have departed when you’re left with some quiet moments of contemplation. And who knows, maybe we’ll have to make the ZYZZYVA […]
Notes on the First 30 Days
by Laura Cogan
On the morning of Inauguration Day, I met up with a friend in midtown Manhattan, where we rented a car and set out for Washington, D.C. Our plan was to make the drive before nightfall, have a quick dinner, finish making our signs, and get a good night’s rest before the Women’s March. Not only was it less expensive to rent a car than to fly or take a train, but our road-trip had the added benefit of keeping us away from TV all day—a serendipitous media blackout for which we were both grateful. We didn’t turn on the radio, […]