Pine Mountain Valley, Georgia
He is Risen signs go up in the neighboring yards, making sure I remember Easter.
On Easter in 1865, Union troops attacked Columbus, Georgia, the city closest to my current address. This was the Civil War’s last battle, and useless. The Confederates had surrendered in Virginia already, but, this far south, neither side knew.
JENNIFER ACKER speaks with VIET THANH NGUYEN
Viet Thanh Nguyen visited Amherst College in February 2022 in the joint roles of Presidential Scholar and LitFest headliner. In his live conversation with The Common’s editor-in-chief Jennifer Acker, he deployed humor and refreshing honesty to discuss his path to publishing his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Sympathizer and its best-selling sequel The Committed. The conversation touched on the complexities of Vietnamese diasporic identity as well as his desire to expand the world of literature to encompass critical thought, breaking through the traditional literary bubble to allow for politics, history, and more. This interview is a collaboration between The Common and Amherst College’s LitFest and is an edited and condensed version of the live conversation.
Curated by SOFIA BELIMOVA
For our September round of Friday Reads, we spoke to two TC contributors, who recommended vibrant prose that leaps off the page and compelling poetry that transcends linguistic barriers while echoing with the sound of home.
Photo by Lisa Rosenberg
Gulf of Kyparissia, Ilia, Greece
1. This is the story
of cigarette butts and discarded straws.
Of beach, and sea, and all that mythology
rolled into one bright ball where my child plays
Reviewed by TERESE SVOBODA
Eleanor Wilner, a recipient of the 2019 Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry and MacArthur-winner, had to be coaxed to publish her first collection at age 42. Arthur Vogelsang, her co-editor at the American Poetry Review, “threatened various forms of physical harm if I failed to follow through.” Her reluctance, she says, was “probably a universal fear of rejection but intensified by a woman’s trained reluctance to put her own work forward.” The skid marks in resisting publication, even in Gone to Earth: Early and Uncollected Poems 1963-1975, Wilner’s ninth book of poetry, are further evidence of such modesty. On the acknowledgments page, Wilner includes an excerpt from a poem by her then-young daughter, begging her mother to publish. This is followed by “To the Reader,” a note which assures readers that the poems “belonged to the realm of imagination and not to the world of opinion,” then an italicized eight-line epigraph ending with “she much preferred / what she could not afford: / the luxury of words and light,” and a prelude poem, “Ritual,” set in prehistoric Africa, mourning the muse, “the blackened stone / that once poured fire from its heart.” Only then, a page later, does the book begin, all poems fully fledged.
This month we welcome back TC contributor NATHAN McCLAIN, whose new collection, Previously Owned, will be published by Four Way Books next month.
Nathan McClain is the author of two collections of poetry—Scale (2017) and Previously Owned (2022)—both from Four Way Books, a recipient of fellowships from The Frost Place, Sewanee Writers Conference, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and a graduate of the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson. A Cave Canem fellow, his poems and prose have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Guesthouse, Poetry Northwest, Zocalo Public Square, The Critical Flame, and the Plume Poetry Anthology 10. He teaches at Hampshire College and serves as poetry editor of the Massachusetts Review.
Where the View Was Clearer
Had I not chosen to live there—
among the oaks and birches,
trees I’d only ever seen in poems
until then…spruce, pine,
among the jack-in-the-pulpit
(though I much preferred “lady slipper”),
Film by SARA DOSA
Review by HANNAH GERSEN
You don’t expect a documentary about volcanos to begin in freezing temperatures, but in the first scenes of Sara Dosa’s enthralling new feature, Fire of Love, married volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft struggle to free a jeep mired in icy slush. Farther down the road is a fiery pool of molten lava. Much later in the film, they trudge through the gray ash of a recently erupted Mount St. Helens, a setting that looks cold even though it is baking hot. Both landscapes seem unreal, even with Maurice and Katia in the frame. Their footage is so remarkable that I would have watched a 90-minute slide show of their photographs. Fire of Love is much more than that, but the film and photo archive is at the heart of the story, and it’s where Dosa looks for clues as she tells the story of the Kraffts’ career, one that was inseparable from their romantic partnership.
Curated by SOFIA BELIMOVA
Is your summer to-be-read list getting sparse? Check out these exciting reading recommendations by TC’s latest contributors, including vibrant poetry that explores identity and relation and two novels that dwell on strange encounters and liminal places.
Maya Marshall’s All the Blood Involved in Love, recommended by Susanna Lang (Contributor)
Those of us already familiar with Maya Marshall’s poetry have wanted to see a collection for years, and her debut, All the Blood Involved in Love (Haymarket, 2022), is worth the wait. There are many poets writing now who focus on their identity, but they do not all have access to such rich language that lifts the concerns linked to her identity—Black, female, queer—to the level of poetry.
Translated from the French by EMMA RAMADAN
The woman took a seat on the bench. She was wearing a little black dress and a coat that was also black, brightened up with a pale blue scarf around her neck. Long blond hair framed her rather beautiful face, which her eyes, drowned in dream, bestowed with a unique absence.
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