Arguments, Aphorisms, and Influence: An Interview With Sarah Manguso

300 Arguments, the most recent book by poet and essayist Sarah Manguso, is marketed as a collection of essays, but that genre isn’t quite accurate. Neither, though, is poetry or fiction. Some reviews have referred to the book as a collection of “fragments,” another wrong word. Manguso has written, just as the title suggests, 300 arguments that, despite their length—often no more than two or three sentences—are complete cases. Originally, the book included seven sections, with the seven section titles […]

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A Public Diary: A Review of Sarah Manguso’s “Ongoingness”

Ongoingness: The End of a Diary by Sarah Manguso Graywolf Press; 104 p. Sometimes queen of heavy darkness, sometimes of blinding light, Sarah Manguso, author of two poetry collections, a short story collection, and two memoirs (Two Kinds of Decay and The Guardians: An Elegy for a Friend), presents her third memoir Ongoingness: The End of a Diary, the story of her compulsive journaling, which ended with the birth of her son. Her starring, dazzlingly complex subjects are time, mortality, […]

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