It is now a common truism that all art is propaganda. Well, we can presume that this means all art has some ideological purpose, conscious or unconscious; that all art is in that … Read the whole text
(pace Al Moritz’s The Garden)
The Depression? Orchestrated pretty ugly indulgences
of contemptuous melodies
due to diminished motor skills
of bony-digit “get-tar” pickers, fidgety pianists,
who had to humble down and join grumblin … Read the whole text
(Excerpts from the forthcoming collection, “Echoes from the Hills”)
In your darkest cloudy nights
I look across your many hills
This City of a million lights
Natural and manmade incandescence.
Perched on one of your … Read the whole text
The Circle
by Katherena Vermette
Hamish Hamilton,
272 pages, $32.00
ISBN: 978-0-7352-3965-4
It’s not necessary to read The Break (2016) and The Strangers (2021) before reading The Circle, Katherena Vermette’s luminous and heart-breaking … Read the whole text
Teardrops on the Weser
by Amatoritsero Ede
Winnipeg, MN: Griots Lounge, 2021
64 pp. $20.99
With Teardrops on the Weser, Amatoritsero Ede guides his readers on a transformative journey across landscapes and memories bringing to the surface … Read the whole text
Since his unexpected death on 7 August 2022, a lot has been written about Biyi Bandele’s life and work by colleagues, friends, family and fans. How he started his writing career as a precocious 14-year-old, by winning … Read the whole text
In a small, redbrick house on a narrow street between John and Union, there live Anne and Robin. They have lived at 25 Severn Avenue for about thirty years. Neither could tell you exactly how … Read the whole text
Toyko was tall, over six feet, but she was slender and athletic. Because of her pedigree and the fact that she was usually the tallest woman, or man, wherever she went, she believed much, too much, … Read the whole text
Transportation’s tough,
if you want to be transported:
the blockbuster museum’s hush
is uniform, like sand.
Adjust the audio tour,
and behind the curtain
of information hiss
streams of static—
what’s art but marked
exits, the urge to … Read the whole text
