My friends were aware of the wish I nurtured.
If I had a daughter,
I would name her Srividya!
I was not influenced by any actor.
Our prayer room hosted a dazzling
crystal Sri Yantra on the holy altar.
By SASHA STILES
The Common is thrilled to welcome Sasha Stiles to our pages for the first time.
Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
What does it mean to be human in a nearly posthuman era? How are the cornerstones of our universal condition—birth, breath, love, sex, faith, death—evolving in the context of biological and computational advances? How does it feel to be mostly flesh and blood in a world increasingly dominated by plastic and silicon, virtual presence and spectral signals? What dark corners of the future and of cyberspace can ancient wisdom illuminate? What does motherhood mean in a world of artificial wombs, lab-grown brains, self-replication, and the uncertain continuation of our species as we know it? Who are these robots, chatbots, androids, cyborgs and intelligences already walking and talking amongst us? Do our avatars make us, in some measure, immortal? TechnELEGY—the ongoing transmedia project and poetry collection from which these pieces are excerpted—is my attempt to grapple with these impossible questions.
—Sasha Stiles
With ALDA SIGMUNDSDÓTTIR
Your name: Alda Sigmundsdóttir
Current city or town: Reykjavík
How long have you lived here: 25 years
Three words to describe the climate: Blustery, cool, refreshing.
Best time of year to visit? Summer for midnight sun; winter for northern lights.
We’d love for you to join us in Amherst to celebrate the launch of Issue 18. The Common‘s student interns will be reading briefly from their favorite pieces in the new issue, and seniors will read from their own writing as well. There will be wine, cheese, and great conversation.
Friday, November 1, 5 p.m.
Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Frost Library
Amherst College
Come toast the latest place-based stories, essays, poems and artwork! We’ll be gathering in Frost Library’s beautiful Center for Humanistic Inquiry, on the Amherst College campus. This event is free and open to the public; bring your family and friends! You can also invite other lit lovers via our Facebook event page.
Curated by: SARAH WHELAN
Issue 18 is almost here! Pre-order your copy today to enjoy brand-new fiction, poetry, essays, and artwork arriving on October 28th. If waiting by the mailbox isn’t your thing, countdown to the magazine’s arrival with book recommendations from some of our Issue 18 contributors.
Recommendations: Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard by Cynthia L. Haven; Loves You: Poems by Sarah Gambito; A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa; The Farm by Joanne Ramos; and Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors.
Poems by MARIO SANTIAGO PAPASQUIARO
Translated from the Spanish by COLE HEINOWITZ
Poems appear in both Spanish and English.
Translator’s Note
A, E, I, O, U. The rhythmic concatenation of these five vowels is the tachycardic pulse of Mario’s poetry, and it cannot be imitated in English. Feeling for correlative patterns in the jangle of our consonant-frontal idiom is something like transcribing the pitch values of a Max Roach drum solo for honkeytonk piano. I do what I can with alliteration but even the relatively long decay of the M or the out-hissing S does not match the multi-textured overtones of a hard O spilling through the rails of its word-cage when struck, trailing a foam of soft E’s across the rubble.
In his thirty years of work in publishing, my grandfather never once revealed to his colleagues he was gay. Doing so could have cost him his job as a children’s book editor at a prestigious house, or at the very least, his reputation as an honest, hard-working family man. It took me only ten minutes, in a phone interview with the same publishing house, to accidentally out him.
Wednesday, November 13, 4:30pm
The Center for Humanistic Inquiry
Frost Library
Amherst College
Free and open to the public
Join The Common and the Amherst College Creative Writing Center for a reading and Q&A with author Joseph O’Neill, hosted by TC Editor in Chief Jennifer Acker. This event is part of the Amherst College Creative Writing Fall Reading Series, which includes several readings around the town of Amherst.
By GRACE SEGRAN
I tucked my hands into the pockets of my cardigan and pulled it around me in a hug as I set out for my walk. The sun was low in the west, the air nippy. I wandered into Central Square just as the City Hall clock above me struck seven. Crossing the street, past the noisy tavern on the left of the sidewalk, and people enjoying conversations and dinner al fresco on the right, I arrived at Rodney’s. The bookstore is an institution in Cambridge, MA. It sells used and rare books with a fast-changing inventory. I made a beeline for the New to Rodney’s table in the center of the store.
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