The term “decolonization” has become increasingly popular within and outside of academia. It names a concept that seems to be especially useful for those of us of Mexican descent. Statements…
Site Archives
Contemporaries Essays, Decolonize X?
Peer Reviewed Articles
Contemporaries Essays, Decolonize X?
Introduction: “Not Only a Metaphor”
1 In 2019, Eve Tuck remarked that were she to write her landmark co-authored essay, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” now, she might change its “catchy, sticky” title to “Decolonization…
Contemporaries Essays, Decolonize X?
Enigmatic Forms
Zadie Smith’s 2013 story “The Embassy of Cambodia” begins with an enigma.1 A new embassy appears in the district of Willesden in North London, catching the attention of two individuals…
Bernadette Mayer, Contemporaries Essays
Contemporaries Essays, The Midwinter Constellation
from Midwinter Constellation
1 ☆ dreams If I could train my dreams it might beonly to be able to remember them.If dreams might be the impressions leftfrom yesterday mine would be of lions,3000…
Bernadette Mayer, Contemporaries Essays
Unsolicited Attention
For the first decade of my love for Bernadette Mayer, I was sad about the “lack of scholarly attention” to her work. This was, in retrospect, a boringly professional complaint:…
Bernadette Mayer, Contemporaries Essays
We May Just Fall
At first, there was only the Creator. “All else was endless space. There was no beginning, and no end, no time, no shape, no life,” wrote the Christian mystic &…
Bernadette Mayer, Contemporaries Essays
Incomprehensible Parts: Reproduction and Comparison in Works & Days (2016)
In the six-line poem “Sway Bar Blues” from 2016’s Works & Days, Bernadette Mayer wittily captures the Sisyphean quality of labor: Oh sway barAnother incomprehensibleAutomobile part, it cost$200 to fix…
Bernadette Mayer, Contemporaries Essays
“Just to distract you like the inside”: a correspondence wrapped up in Bernadette Mayer’s poetry
THE COLOR RED “as each moment of love is past I fear so heartily the loss of it wishing it only to begin again as quickly as the fire becomes…