Language is a system of relationships we use to relate to ourselves, other people, and the world we live in. But in Nervous System, a phone that transcribes voice-to-text messages in the wrong language highlights the boundaries of linguistic systems. Ella slips between those systems, but her meaning sometimes gets lost in translation.
Read MoreStay Safe is a crochet of excavation and design. As surprising as bird-eating whitetails, Emma Hine’s imaginative appetite bewilders and delights. The poet teaches us that we can become something more, something other, both with and against protection, but not without extraordinary curiosity and the willingness to be transformed…
Read MoreIn the middle of these emotional arcs, the book wrestles with one fundamental question that it repeatedly asks its characters and readers: how does one live in a world so obsessed with toxic elements that it is impossible to fully separate oneself from what is toxic? Or, put another way: “Would you rather not have / been brought into this world— / never to experience / gaggling geese / cartwheeling from blue sky?”
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