Harold Bloom once stated in an interview with The Paris Review that poetry slam is “the death of art.” I like that. The gravity of the statement feels like its own commendation. But I would like to offer here that poetry slam is more accurately described as the art of death—the art of dying to oneself. You can hear the resonances of this approach in some of the descriptive terms of the slam, nowhere more vividly than in the role of the sacrificial poet: the first writer to touch stage during a slam.
White's characters are masterfully drawn, and his use of language is brilliant. He does an amazing job having mother and son describe what it means to live with their gift: "It's like I exist all at once, but I can't keep up," Key says at one point, while Colly reflects, "I am misplaced, lost in moments I believe to be linear."
This demand — and spirit — for bolder storytelling that transcends borders and identities certainly can be found in Oza’s generous novel. The author opens things up for her readers. More life, more joy and more love amid a shifting and layered landscape of unspeakable loss. It’s all there — the complicated humanity and grief of Oza’s family of characters — for the reader to consider and behold.
About 1500 years ago, a series of natural disasters transformed the world. Over the course of two decades, volcanic eruptions in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and across the tropics threw a dust veil into the atmosphere that obscured the light and warmth of the sun.
Scientists seek records of these events in ice cores, rock strata, and radiocarbon isotopes, but in The Earth Transformed Peter Frankopan traces their bleak impacts in Tang dynasty annals, Puebloan archaeology from the Colorado Plateau, Jain texts from Madhya Pradesh, and material from sacrificial sites in modern-day Denmark.
Overcast morning, cool and grey.
The white cat bends low
to drink from the swimming pool.