Meet Our Contributors, MQR 55:1
Meet the poets, essayists, fiction writers, and translators of MQR 55:1.
View ArticleGarbage People, Mr. Kafka, Hansel and Gretel Get Guns, and more
Excerpts and curios from around the web: Franz Kafka's workout regimen, the linguistic history of 'garbage person,' classic fairy tales re-imagined by the NRA, and a chance to rip open your shirt and...
View ArticleLiterary Hate Mail, Sex with Shakespeare, and more
Excerpts and curios from around the web: The enduring art of literary hate mail, Shakespeare as a springboard for spanking, some thoughts on why giving up writing might not be wrong, and Lydia Davis on...
View ArticleFrom the Archive: “Presence” by Czesław Miłosz
When I ran barefoot in our gardens by the river Nieviaza Something was there, that I didn’t then try to name: Everywhere, between the trunks of linden trees, on the sunny side of the lawn, on the path...
View ArticleSVU with a Vengeance: The Horrors of “Ladivine”
There's an emphasis on character action in fiction that I've always found hilariously American. We don't read for historical perspective, for philosophy, for abstraction or allegory or poetic language...
View Article“We Are Always Us: The Boundaries of Elena Ferrante,” by Natalie Bakopoulos
The friendship is both tender and antagonistic, deeply intimate and full of spite, and Elena reflects on the difficulty of telling her own story without Lila in it. There is Lila’s story and there is...
View ArticleClimbing Lion Rock: An Interview with Wawa and Henry Wei Leung
"This intense, absurd tragedy, I realize now, is my invisible foundation. The myth of Pei Pei is born here—an image that picks up the devastation between Nietzsche and the world and between me and Hong...
View Article“January 1, 1924,” by Osip Mandelstam
Oh, life of clay! Oh, century’s death throes! I am afraid only he will understand you Who wears the helpless human smile of a man Who has exhausted himself.
View ArticleFour Pheasants for Your Silence: A Review of Marcel Proust’s “Letters to His...
The portrait these letters paint of an artist trying to hone his craft at all costs transforms them from obscure Proustiana into a richer portrait of Proust the man, neighbor, and writer.
View ArticleFrom the Archive: “To Silvestre Revueltas of Mexico, In His Death,” by Pablo...
When a man like Silvestre Revueltas goes back into the ground at last, there is a rumor, a wave's voice and a cry that makes ready and makes known his departure.
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