Toward a Theory of Female Phallicism

by K. Allison Hammer The 2020 Netflix documentary Disclosure gives an historical sweep of transphobia in Hollywood, briefly revisiting that nadir of ’90s transmisogyny— The Crying Game (1992). While I’m highly skeptical of Disclosure’s optimism about the transformative power of mainstream representation, celebrity culture, and Hollywood itself, I was grateful for its renewed attention to the Crying Game’s viral transmisogyny. Thanks to Disclosure, the scene … Continue reading Toward a Theory of Female Phallicism

Diving Into the Wreck: Trans and Anti-Trans Feminism

by Joy Ladin In summer 2000, Emi Koyama’s influential “Transfeminist Manifesto” defined trans feminism as “a movement by and for trans women who view their liberation to be intrinsically linked to the liberation of all women and beyond” (245). For Koyama, and for many trans and non-trans feminists since, trans feminism is a no-brainer, one among many efforts to “broaden” feminism to include “women who … Continue reading Diving Into the Wreck: Trans and Anti-Trans Feminism

WRI(GH)TE [ING] PUNCTUATION: READING LESLIE SCALAPINO

by Jordan Antonucci Scalapino’s The Dihedrons Gazelle-Dihedrals Zoom is remarkable in its physical and lyrical layers. It takes its readers to an imaginative space that lives at the bottom of the psyche and provides characters that continue to leave a space open for interpretation. She creates a deep dream state from which the reader surfaces occasionally in reality to encompass world issues and basic human … Continue reading WRI(GH)TE [ING] PUNCTUATION: READING LESLIE SCALAPINO

Home (Un)founded: Introduction

Editorial Statement for “If I didn’t write it down, it’s shhhhh”: On Writing Dementia By Susan M. Schultz   Homeward directly, I wish –Patricia Rose Straub, “Anastrophe” This notion that home can operate as a foundation of identity allows that identity (since we seem to need it) might function as some kind of “soul,” part of the baggage we can’t leave (behind, or somewhere else) … Continue reading Home (Un)founded: Introduction

The Practice of Worlds: Will Alexander’s “Compression and Purity”

by Gary Sloboda I first encountered Will Alexander’s poetry after enduring (almost willingly) a six-year lapse in my own writing.  To a recovering non-writer, the amplitude of Alexander’s poetry exploded and reinvigorated what had degenerated into the shorn lingual sphere I had come to inhabit.  Since reading Alexander’s works, such as Asia & Haiti, Above the Human Nerve Domain, and The Sri Lankan Loxodrome, his … Continue reading The Practice of Worlds: Will Alexander’s “Compression and Purity”

Alice Notley: Sheets of Time in Contemporary Lyric Practice

by Chris Tysh   I don’t fuck much with the past but I fuck plenty with the future –Patti Smith [1] ●  “One day, I awoke” “& found myself on”  “a subway” (3) ●  Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita[2] mi ritrovai per una selva obsura for the straight way was lost ●  A sea of stories[3]: in the endless night I ride below … Continue reading Alice Notley: Sheets of Time in Contemporary Lyric Practice

A Berth in the Haven

An Excerpt from Outside Inside, a Memoir     A berth at Grand Haven had been dead Paul Blackburn’s gift to us. A teaching position at Thomas Jefferson College of Grand Valley State Colleges in Annandale, Michigan. TJC. I thought it was weirdly ironic. Baz and Paul had spent a long evening together when Paul was first offered a teaching job at Cortland. I heard … Continue reading A Berth in the Haven

Experimental Prose and the Reconfiguration of Incestuous Bonds: from the Grasmere Journal to Tender Buttons

  by Joshua Wilner Suppose one were to approach Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere Journal as a radical complement to William’s efforts to demonstrate that “there is no essential difference between the language of poetry and the language of prose.” Suppose, that is, one were to view the pages of her journal as participating in a history of experimental prose that includes such figures as De Quincey, … Continue reading Experimental Prose and the Reconfiguration of Incestuous Bonds: from the Grasmere Journal to Tender Buttons

Trans Verse (or, Traver’s Tranifesto)

by Traver Pam Dick   1   Then one moment it dawned on me, I turned into Traver. 2   Crossroads like of philosophy and lit.  Poetry and fiction. 3   Prose poem qua transverse.  Lines as stanzas, steps in weird proofs, notes.  Traver got blue shoulders. 4   Forms are aspect shifts.  Facing different directions.  Two faces, hourglass.  Duck-rabbit.  Dick-Traver.  Mode swings. 5   It’s too hot in here, … Continue reading Trans Verse (or, Traver’s Tranifesto)

The Black Hole Between Science and Art

In a famous 1959 essay entitled “The Two Cultures,” C.P Snow argued that the sciences and humanities were at a serious impasse, suffering from “mutual incomprehension.” The lack of common ground made communication between the two cultures difficult if not impossible. Due to accelerated overspecialization, suspicion ran high in both camps. To illustrate the climate of cultural paranoia that existed in America in the 1950s, … Continue reading The Black Hole Between Science and Art

To the End of Ezra Pound

by Nicholas A. DeBoer I. Biographical/Introductory Who is he to be evil?  A toppled man. people don’t change.  They only stand more revealed.” (Olson, Maximus to Gloucester: Letter 2) Within the infinite losses of sixteen million humans in the Great War, including T.E. Hulme & Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Ezra Pound felt a loss that echoed throughout the 20s.  Combined with his own judgment of failure as … Continue reading To the End of Ezra Pound

All About Praxis

Part 1: Queer Rhetoric and the Therapy of Watching Movies   Judith Halberstam, in “Shame and White Gay Masculinity,” her response to the University of Michigan’s 2003 conference at the University of Michigan on Gay Shame, worried about the potentiality for projecting that shame in other, identity-based ways (her article particularly concerned around race).  Certainly Michael Warner anticipated this in The Trouble With Normal when … Continue reading All About Praxis

Taking Its Pulse: Poetry in the Context of Narrative Medicine

Since its introduction to US medical schools in the early 1970s, interest in literature and medicine has steadily gathered steam, blossoming into a full-fledged academic field featuring a broad range of theories, sub-disciplines, and competing methodologies. Literature & Medicine, launched in 1982, has served as the principal forum for growth and serious conversation around the subject, publishing side-by-side the work of health educators, bioethicists, linguists, … Continue reading Taking Its Pulse: Poetry in the Context of Narrative Medicine

Toward a Definition of Collaboration: Collaborative Authorship in the Arts

Over the last three decades art-theorists and critics have begun to pay more attention to both collaborative teams and collaboration as subjects of enquiry. Around the time this study formally began in 2003, ‘collaboration’ emerged at the forefront of artistic trends and debates: In 2003, the Chapman Brothers were nominated for the Turner Prize as a collaborative team; in 2004 Third Text dedicated an entire … Continue reading Toward a Definition of Collaboration: Collaborative Authorship in the Arts

Olson Meets Web 2.0

Let’s say that Charles Olson, who fretted about the short life-spans of his male ancestors as an indicator of his early death in “The K” (Olson, Selected 159), does not die in 1970 at the age of 59. Worn out, he goes underground and just observes the culture for a very long time. In full possession of his faculties, he turns a century old in … Continue reading Olson Meets Web 2.0