“Krasznahorkai Was the Biggest Influence For Me In This Project”: An Interview With Anna Heflin

Anna Heflin

What does it mean to create a new artistic form? Anna Heflin did just that with her new album, The Redundancy of the Angelic: An Interluding Play. She describes the work, which blends music and text, as having been inspired by  “spiders, apocalyptic angels and my encounters in Los Angeles.” The result is a challenging, immersive work that draws on a host of disparate influences. We spoke about its genesis and her own multidisciplinary pursuits via email.

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Hether Fortune on Poetry, Shoegaze, and the Return of Wax Idols

The music made by Wax Idols is equally visceral and melodic, and can shift from one to the other at a moment’s notice. Their new album, Happy Ending, is due out on May 16th, and they’ll be venturing out on tour later this year. For the group’s founder, Hether Fortune, that’s one of several things keeping her busy: she released her first collection of poetry earlier this year, and has also been making forays into visual art. I spoke with […]

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Emilyn Brodsky Reacts to Dolan Morgan’s “Insignificana”

Dolan Morgan’s new story collection Insignificana includes 22 illustrations by the author. To celebrate the release of the book, Morgan asked three of his favorite writers to create responses to the images. Poet Allyson Paty, fiction writer Jessica Lee Richardson, and musician Emilyn Brodsky each received three illustrations and free reign to do whatever they want. Below, find the third set of illustrations and Brodsky’s reply.

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Jessica Lee Richardson Reacts to Dolan Morgan’s “Insignificana”

Dolan Morgan’s new story collection Insignificana includes 22 illustrations by the author. To celebrate the release of the book, Morgan asked three of his favorite writers to create responses to the images. Poet Allyson Paty, fiction writer Jessica Lee Richardson, and musician Emilyn Brodsky each received three illustrations and free reign to do whatever they want. Below, find the second set of illustrations and Richardson’s reply.

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Allyson Paty Reacts to Dolan Morgan’s “Insignificana”

Dolan Morgan’s new story collection Insignificana includes 22 illustrations by the author. To celebrate the release of the book, Morgan asked three of his favorite writers to create responses to the images. Poet Allyson Paty, fiction writer Jessica Lee Richardson, and musician Emilyn Brodsky each received three illustrations and free reign to do whatever they want. Below, find the first set of illustrations and Paty’s reply.

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Notes on the Modern Elegy: A Review of “Gabriel: A Poem”

Gabriel: A Poem by Edward Hirsch (Knopf; 78 p.)  Elegies, in our age of access to centuries’ worth of poems, can seem outdated, stilted, and perhaps even a bit indulgent. It’s hard to imagine a straightforward popular and populist book lamenting death like John Gunther’s howl of an elegy for his young son, Death Be Not Proud today. I find it hard not to feel an instinctive response of both been-there-seen-that and the attending tic of kindness that tells us […]

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Almost Live at Mellow Pages: Mike Bushnell

In this episode we have a wonderful talk with poet Mike Bushnell, author of the just-out OHSO, a sprawling and beautiful book of poetry that will infect the heart and consciousness. We rap about performance and how Mike has developed his very unique voice and style and Mike gives us all a taste as he reads from OHSO. If you ever get the chance to see Mike perform, we highly suggest you do so.

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Literary Enthusiasm, Challenging Forms, and the Dos-à-Dos: Dicussing The Agriculture Reader with Justin Taylor

It was a cold spring morning when I arrived in Carroll Gardens to meet with Justin Taylor at a coffee shop. I was there to talk with him about The Agriculture Reader, the journal he co-edits with Jeremy Schmall. More broadly, I was also curious to see how the publication’s focus on poetry and esoteric fiction dovetailed with Taylor’s own concerns as an author. Taylor had a number of past issues of The Agriculture Reader with him, and I snapped a few photos, documenting […]

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