Words In Motion
In the second installment of her miniseries “Words in Motion,” Smile Ximai Jiang uses Kenji Yoshino’s Covering as a lens through which to interrogate her own cultural and creative impulses.
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Words In Motion
“Names hold power. Names communicate, address, connect. Names hold,” writes Smile Jiang in her mini-series on language, “Words In Motion.” In this essay, Smile looks at the fluidity and use of language as it reshapes our words, our perspectives, and our worlds.
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2023 Best of the Net
Congratulations to Michael Battisto, Anya-Maria Johnson, Anna Morrison, Devon Neal, Ben Russell, Evan Wang, Elizabeth Jannuzzi, Kathleen Frank, Amy Nelder, and Anthony Santulli for being our 2023 BotN nominees.
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Cultural Criticism
“AI art is the product of the AI’s interpretation of the prompt, not a compilation of human artistic choices,” writes Noah Ma. In their essay on AI-generated art versus human-created art, Noah ruminates on the ethics of AI art and its place in the future of the art world.
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Interview
“This poem was the culmination of many different conversations, each discussing systemic inequalities and the way they’ve been upheld over time. These discussions framed the way I thought of colonialism, or what once was, and coloniality, or what persists, and how this [cycle] continually serves power dynamics that have persisted for generations.” On the blog, Leela Raj-Sankar speaks to Mariya Kika on her poem “Vengeance.”
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Interview
“I think my experience with acute illness returned me to the more primal aspects of poetry. Once I got out the nitty gritty details, I sought solace in something that feels more akin to song.” On the blog, Zoe Elisabeth interviews Nicole Callihan.
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Book Review
“Through Nell, Idlewild assures the reader that while it might not be okay at present, someday it can be. It can be. Being queer is being queer enough.” On the blog, Lucy Curtis reviews James Frankie Thomas’ Idlewild (Overlook Press, 2023).
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Interview
“How would a Midwestern girl experience jealousy? And how would that Midwestern girl experience that jealousy if she also happened to be Filipina American? What if she was an eldest daughter, or an academic achiever, or a chronic people pleaser?” On the blog, Saturne Browne interviews Bea Bolongaita on her new chapbook, The Tomato Woman (Sunset Press, 2023).
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Interview
Recently, Leela Raj-Sankar chatted with Carina Solis about the process behind her poem “American Dream,” published in Rust & Moth, which you can read here. This interview is part of “How I Wrote This,” a new series where Leela interviews poets about the process, inspiration, and influences behind their writing.
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Announcements
We’re excited to welcome Maria Gray as COUNTERCLOCK Journal’s next Managing Editor! Maria is a poet from Portland, Oregon, currently based in central Maine. Her microchapbook “Universal Red” was released this summer by Ghost City Press; individual poems are forthcoming from or published in Best New Poets, The Columbia Review, The Lumiere Review, and others.
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Interview
“I want to wander; I believe it’s in my bones, and how do we wander when we need to stay primarily in one place?” On the blog, Heather Qin interviews Hari Alluri on his new chapbook, Our Echo of Sudden Mercy (Next Page Press, 2022).
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Book Review
“When We Were Sisters is a remarkable story about sisterhood, trauma, and grief. To turn its pages is like turning the whole ocean apart, finding pieces of itself in the debris.” On the blog, Harsimran Kaur reviews Fatimah Asghar’s When We Were Sisters (Penguin Random House, 2022).
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Interview
“I think one of the scariest things to me about The Poetry World is how often many poets, especially academic poets, turn to physical violence as shorthand without thinking critically about it … I think we owe it to ourselves to really interrogate our relationship with metaphorical violence.” On the blog, Bella Rotker interviews Gaia Rajan on her new chapbook, Killing It (Black Lawrence Press, 2022).
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2021 Best of the Net
Congratulations to Christian Butterfield, Zoë Cunniffe, Maria Gray, Iris A. Law, Sarah Mohammed, Victoria Nordlund, G.D. Brown, Sarah Feng, Hratch Israelian, and Isabella Lobo for being our 2021 BoN nominees.
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Book Review
“Levin has a knack for writing characters I would despise if I met them at a party but whose pursuits in this novel I followed attentively.” On the blog, Sophie Allen reviews Adam Levin’s Mount Chicago (Doubleday Books, 2022).
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Book Review
“The lasting connections forged between strangers is a recurring theme of Life Among the Terranauts, a running thread that binds the brief narratives of everyday life.” On the blog, Eliza Browning reviews Caitlin Horrock’s Life Among the Terranauts (Little, Brown, 2021).
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Announcements
COUNTERCLOCK, home to COUNTERCLOCK Journal, PATCHWORK, and the Arts Collective, is pleased to announce the appointment of Rachel Lu, formerly Managing Editor, as the next editor to succeed Sarah Feng, who has overseen the organization as editor from 2019 to 2022.
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Book Review
“Since the U.S. fails to live up to its ideals as described in songs — the land of the free, a country that welcomes all and celebrates diversity — Lima writes her own poems into song.” On the blog, Esther Sun reviews Ananda Lima’s Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press, 2021).
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Book Review
“Marlowe Granados uses the city of New York as a sewing needle; through the eye of the neo-flapper of the 21st century, she pulls a thread of interesting and wide selection of characters and quietly sews them in and out of the story, embroidering a mirrored painting of the hollow and deceitful society of New York.” On the blog, Zeynep Bashak reviews Marlowe Granados’ Happy Hour (Verso Books, 2021).
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Sticky Notes
“But as I stand on the curb, watching the blue and white shuttle wheeze into the fog, I know that she’s not really leaving and will never be gone from my life in the way that I tend to fear.” A collection of stories about friends and driving.
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