The Weekly Atticus (11/18/2017)

Come Make Out With Us | The Weekly Atticus

A recap of the week at Atticus Review, along with some extras.

Dear ,

On my drive to work the other evening, following my headlights through the early darkness, I kept turning over this line from a poem by D.H. Lawrence: Life is for kissing and for horrid strife. I first chanced across those words almost twenty years ago, but they ring more true today than ever.If you’re anything like me, especially lately, you’ve spent so much time worrying about the news that a kind of existential panic sets in, an almost daily questioning of the value of literature in a nation fragmented by postmodernism, wounded by broken healthcare, peppered by mass shootings, and overshadowed by the perpetual threat of nuclear war. Yet if the submissions queue here at Atticus Review is any indication--both in terms of the accepted work and all the great poems, essays, and stories still pouring in every day, requesting consideration--people are more drawn to literature than ever. Which is something to be optimistic about, if you ask me.Based on the quality of this week's issue, it's not just that people are generally drawn to literature in times of "horrid strife;" they're especially drawn to relevant, well-crafted literature that challenges their perceptions even as it celebrates the beautiful messes in which we human beings seem to continuously find ourselves. Put another way, I know that times are tough, but here's a whole issue that's so good, you'll probably want to make out with it.Thanks for reading. We’re glad you're here.

Michael MeyerhoferPoetry Editor

Editorial Note: We will be off next week. Have a Happy Thanksgiving. We'll be back November 27th with some exciting announcements!

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FERAL TOWN by Adam Gustavson

POETRY FEATURE: Barbara UngarThe only thing better than publishing a great poet is publishing them twice. Barbara Ungar first graced our pages about five years ago (almost to the month), and I’m working on a theory that everything bad that’s happened in the world since then can be blamed on a lack of Ungar’s poetry taking center stage in our lives. So, yeah—let’s fix that.FIVE POEMS BY BARBARA UNGAR

MUSIC REVIEW: Here's Why Bully Might Save Music, and AmericaBy David Olimpio"Enter Bully, a rock band from Nashville fronted by Alica Bognanno, providing a welcome antidote to what has become an increasingly plastic and antiseptic hipster-rock landscape. Their sound scours with a grit and energy, like 90s grunge, and Bognanno's personal, intimate lyrics, are more than word candy to carry notes—they are grounding and relevant for today's crisis of empathy, our cultural disconnect from reality."READ MORE

BOOK REVIEW: Making Room A Review of THE GLASS EYE by Jeannie VanascoReview by Rachel Wooley"The Glass Eye doesn’t attempt to explain grief so much as to illuminate it, showing its effects on Jeannie’s life and those connected to her. Despite this, the book is not somber. It doesn’t ask for sympathy or pity. Instead, it invites the reader in to examine, with Vanasco, the nuances of life as a human being searching for meaning, for connections to the people we love, and the moments that stay with us, for whatever reason, long after they’ve passed into memory."READ MORE

CNF: The Way It Used to BeBy Robert IuloPart of our ongoing series: Superunknown: Stories About Songs"We weren’t out of tune, those of us on Vanderbilt Avenue near 43rd Street that day. We were in tune; the musicians, the audience, the time, and the place. For that brief moment in time, on a busy street in New York, people stopped, listened, shared of themselves. Nothing else mattered. Everything else could wait because we all understood this kind of magic doesn’t happen often."READ MORE

FILM: RIDING THE HIGHLINEA film by Kai Carlson-Wee"Riding a freight train is such a wild, visceral experience, and my brother and I wanted to explore a style of film that could accommodate both narrative and poetry. We wanted to tell a personal story, but we also wanted to capture the scale and raw beauty of the ride. So much of traveling is about novel experience, about encountering the unknown, but another part, perhaps a larger part, is about the private way in which new experiences shape us and allow us to change. I wanted the film to capture the way these elements are internalized, the way they’re processed, and turned into poetry."READ MORE