Olive Amdur

Friday Reads: March 2021

March 5, 2021 Reviews

Here in Western Massachusetts, the harsh New England winter is gradually thawing, and our greyish snowbanks are melting into puddles. Meanwhile, our interns have returned to their spring semester classes and their work at The Common. This March, we’re hearing what’s propelled them through their long winter break toward a brighter and warmer spring.

Recommendations: The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud, The House in the Cerulean Sea by T. J. Klune, Elizabeth Costello by J. M. Coetzee, A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet

Ephemeral Address

March 3, 2021 Dispatches

By JAMES ALAN GILL

Tonapah Desert, Arizona

At night from this distance, the twin rivers of car lights, red and white, barely seem to move along the I-10, even though I know from experience they’re traveling upwards of 80 mph. Most people see this stretch of empty desert between Phoenix and the California border as nothing worth slowing down to consider—the different personalities of the Saguaro, some with broken limbs or holes made by woodpeckers, or the colored bands of rock created by volcanic uplift or erosion from some previous era when there was measurable rainfall here — it all looks the same from blurred car windows.

2021 Festival of Debut Authors

February 26, 2021 News and Events

On March 25th at 7:00pm, in honor of ten years of publishing and cultivating new voices, please join The Common‘s special events team for an evening devoted to emerging talents! Celebrate with poets and prose writers Ama Codjoe, Sara Elkamel, LaToya Faulk, Ben Shattuck, Cleo Qian, and Ghassan Zeineddine. This event will take place virtually via Zoom.

This inaugural festival features readings and conversation, and aims to to raise scholarship funds for the magazine’s Young Writers Program. All contributions will be matched by the Whiting Foundation.

Register for the event, hosted by Tess Taylor, Katherine Vaz, and JinJin Xu, here!

REGISTER

February 2021 Poetry Feature

February 25, 2021 Poetry

Poems by REBECCA MORGAN FRANK, JEFFREY HARRISON, CALEB NOLEN, and ALEXANDRA WATSON.

Contents:

Rebecca Morgan Frank | I hold with those who favor fire
Jeffrey Harrison | Hazards, 2020
Caleb Nolen | The Deal
| Jonah Years
Alexandra Watson | when the party’s over or, portrait of an addict zero days sober or, my mom sent me this book healing the addicted brain

Delusions of Grandeur

February 24, 2021 Essays

By A. NATASHA JOUKOVSKY

There is something post-decadent about Versailles in winter. The fountains are off; there are not many tourists. Everything is still fiercely geometric and over-the-top, but in this gray, expired kind of way, at least for most of the day; sunset, and the crisp, clear chill of nighttime being the exceptions. Most of the sculptures are covered with tarps, and tertiary destinations like the amphitheater and “outdoor living room” are gated off entirely. As at all times of year, there is remarkably little furniture, the bulk of it having been moved to the Louvre in the name of égalité. I spent the first five years of my career working in grand museums, and this has always been one of my favorite things about them: that they are bastions of opulence that seem morally defensible, inclusive and elite at once. Because Versailles too is now a museum, the awesomeness of its grandeur has been contextualized into an argument against itself, its ostentation forgiven as a public good. At moments it feels almost Soviet, and you can’t help but be reminded that if you trace the political spectrum far enough left or right you end up in effectively the same place.

December 2020 Poetry Feature: Virginia Konchan

December 11, 2020 Poetry

This month we welcome back VIRGINIA KONCHAN with a single-author feature.

Table of Contents:

– Yoga Veda

– Memoir

– Beautiful

– Domestic

Writers on Writing: A. Kendra Greene

November 30, 2020 Interviews

This interview is the fourth in a new series, Writers on Writing, which focuses on craft and process. The series is part of The Common’s 10th anniversary celebration.

Read Greene’s essay, “Upright Members in Good Standing.”

A. Kendra Greene began her museum career marrying text to the exhibition wall, painstakingly, character by character, each vinyl letter trembling at the point of a bonefolder. She became an essayist during a Fulbright fellowship in South Korea, finished her MFA at the University of Iowa as a Jacob K. Javits Fellow, and then convinced the Dallas Museum of Art they needed a writer-in-residence. She is a guest artist at the Nasher Sculpture Center and a Library Innovation Lab Fellow at Harvard University. Her first book,The Museum of Whales You Will Never See, will be published by Penguin Books.

November 2020 Poetry Feature: David Lehman

November 27, 2020 Poetry

We are happy to welcome DAVID LEHMAN back to our pages.

The Complete History of the Boy

1.
The baby giggled in his crib.
His father walked in. “Why are you laughing?”
“Because,” the baby said, “we all have our joy.”
It was his first sentence.

When the baby had his own bed,
he said children are luckier than grownups
because they get to sleep in their own bed
while grownups have to share.

At four he was asked what he wanted
to be when he grew up. “Santa Claus,” he said.

That was Thanksgiving. By January he thought better of it.
“I never want to be a grown-up because
that would be the end of me.”

It was the age of the aphorism:
“Candles are statues that burn for the ceremony.”
“Saliva is the maid of your mouth.” (It cleanses it.)

On Halloween

November 4, 2020 Dispatches, Translation

By VASYL LOZYNSKY

Translated by the author and JESSICA ZYCHOWICZ

Hudson, NY

I feel greedy, I have a frog in my throat because of this
expensive beer. I start to ask around, like a detective,
and immediately get some info
from the writer sitting at our table nearby,
whom I got to know just now.
The house of Ashbery has likely mahogany doors facing
the square, probably where city hall is.
I don’t even think about visiting without letting
someone know first. I stop and read a few poems in a bookshop.
You won’t repeat the jokes, I say,
you’ll go around to all the apartments on Halloween
with pumpkins, like I used to do
in my childhood, but then the main thing was trick or treat,
not to force someone for an interview or a photograph.

Brief Exchanges

October 28, 2020 Essays, Issue 20, Issue 20 Essays, Lusosphere, Translation

By SUSANA MOREIRA MARQUES

Translated by JULIA SANCHES

1.
It begins with her saying I’ve never told anyone and ends with me saying Neither have I. And in between, a single sentence on how the love we feel for a child is not necessarily immediate, on how we need time to get to know and fall in love with another being, even though they were once inside us. We talk over the phone; this may never have happened face-to-face, or as we looked one another in the eye.

Olive Amdur

oliveamdur

Friday Reads: March 2021

Ephemeral Address

2021 Festival of Debut Authors

REGISTER

February 2021 Poetry Feature

Delusions of Grandeur

December 2020 Poetry Feature: Virginia Konchan

Writers on Writing: A. Kendra Greene

November 2020 Poetry Feature: David Lehman

On Halloween

Brief Exchanges

Discover the extraordinary in The Common.