News & Events | Page 161 | The Common | A Modern Sense of Place: Stories, Poems, Essays & Images

The Common @ the National Book Foundation’s Why Reading Matters Conference

May 25, 2018 News and Events

Are you an educator? Do you work with students? Join us as The Common editors present at The National Book Foundation’s third annual Why Reading Matters conference on June 7 at St. Francis College in Brooklyn.

Editor in Chief Jennifer Acker and Associate Editor and Director of The Common in the Classroom Elizabeth Witte will be joined by Katherine Hill, a TC contributor and Assistant Professor of English at Adelphi University, for a panel discussion: Reaching from There to Here: broadening student perspectives through place-focused literature.

Check out more details on the conference here. TC readers receive a 15% discount on registration with the code: NBFFRIEND

May 2018 Poetry Feature

May 25, 2018 Poetry

New poems by our contributors CALLY CONAN-DAVIES and PETER JAY SHIPPY

CALLY CONAN-DAVIES

At the Meringo Hotel

There’s nothing to leave at the door.
There is no door.
No writing on the wall.
Where are the walls?
No need to raise the roof.
The lack of roof proves the sun and moon,
and the cliff edge of a continent
is not so steep you can’t head your horse down it.

The Globe

May 23, 2018 Dispatches

By SEAN GILL

Berlin, Germany

Inside Berlin’s Deutsches Historisches Museum, there is a quiet passageway which serves as a spatial juncture between the Nazi era and the Soviet one. There is only one exhibit in this place: an enormous metal globe, encircled by wooden framing and encased in glass. Its lands are tinted municipal yellow-brown, its seas faded cyan. This particular globe may once have belonged to Ribbentrop, Goebbels, or perhaps Hitler himself. This is not a shock; Hitler’s actual desk rests in the preceding room, about forty meters behind you. You have therefore already experienced such a flood of icy association; an anxious dread similar to when you behold a steep precipice, or pass by a policeman toting an automatic weapon.

On Noticing: an interview with Kirstin Allio

May 20, 2018 Interviews

ISABEL MEYERS interviews KIRSTIN ALLIO

Kirstin Allio is the author of the short story collection Clothed, Female Figure and the novel Garner, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her latest novel, Buddhism for Western Children, will be the inaugural novel from The Iowa Review Series, a new imprint from University of Iowa Press, coming out in the fall of 2018. In this month’s interview, Kirstin Allio and The Common’s editorial assistant Isabel Meyers discuss motherhood, childhood memories, and society’s fascination with religious cults.

Bella Figura

May 19, 2018 Poetry

By JULIA LICHTBLAU

The best garden in Brooklyn is like Fred Astaire
Charming but inaccessible.
A private creation for public viewing.
I look down into it from my living room,
Its spilling vines and spruce hedge-tops lend cachet to my garden.
Yet a high fence keeps us
Properly separate.
As does the rusty chain link gate on the street side,
which is only opened for
Tree-trimming and the like.

Digging Out Potatoes

May 11, 2018 Poetry, Translation

By BESIK KHARANAULI
Translated from the Georgian by ILAN STAVANS with GVANTSA JOBAVA

“We should dig out potatoes tomorrow!”
you told me,
pulling the chair close to the bed
where you were planning to place your clothes
after switching off the light.

Take Me With You

May 9, 2018 Dispatches

By MARCIA DESANCTIS

Morocco

An hour from Marrakesh, a car delivers my friend and me to Imlil for a day-hike in the High Atlas Mountains. Judging by the heavy-gauge North Face jacket and ice-climbing boots worn by our guide Abderrahim, it’s clear I’ve miscalculated trekking in Morocco in February. I scan the snowy peaks and wonder how I will fare in my paltry jacket and no hat. And there he is. He sits patiently, about five feet from me, looking timid and cold. His head tilts downward, and although there is no eye contact, I sense he knows I’m there. I’m overtaken by a swell of tenderness and yearning, and I say to my friend, “I think this guy just AirDropped me his heart.”

Scarpia (Aside)

April 30, 2018 Issue 15, Issue 15 Poetry, Poetry

By RICARDO PAU-LLOSA

Tosca

I heard those ripened, muted swoons, although
that was no kiss—a dagger sunk into my chest.
What use authority if it cannot impose
a hidden will? The songbird, let her muse
the painter in his cavern, his mettle at the test,

Guests with A Heavy Presence

April 30, 2018 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 15, Issue 15 Fiction, Translation

By JA’FAR AL-OQUAILI

Translated by ALICE GUTHRIE

Regardless of how it turned out, the situation certainly demanded a courageous decision. I could no longer bear the chaos that had spread to all areas of my life—a life that I was constantly striving to keep in the best possible state of order.