Like every year in recent memory, 2020 found our country in crisis, where one catastrophe followed another, cascaded pummelingly upon our heads, really, with seemingly no reprieve. Like all facile reductions, though, such a synopsis fails, its seductive power blinding us to a more comprehensive picture of things. Against various cynical postures, I say the following: While 2020 saw much of the country either succumb to lies, whether in the form of death-cult fascism or death-cult capitalism masquerading as democracy, it also found a large, diverse group of people spontaneously and horizontally organizing to combat fascism, nationalism, and white supremacy, to tear down numerous symbols of racist, imperialist violence, moreover to combat policing and imprisonment in its many forms. In the face of governmental failure to protect and sustain poor and working class people, it also found many people building community networks organized around the principles of mutual aid, solidarity, and autonomous direct action, foregrounding compassion, cooperation, and interdependence. And for all of this, I am inspired, emboldened, and grateful.
I’m also grateful for having once again published a host of great writers across the genres, among them Shushan Avagyan, Jeffery Renard Allen, Will Alexander, Rosaire Appel, Rae Armantrout, Jaswinder Bolina, Gillian Cummings, Raymond de Borja, J. S. DeYoung, Rikki Ducornet, Lisa Gulesserian, Tim Horvath, Andrew Joron, Michael Joyce, Karen An-hwei Lee, Norman Lock, Robert Lopez, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Joe Milazzo, Lance Olsen, Aimee Parkison, Meg Pokrass, Elizabeth Robinson, Pamela Ryder, Ken Sparling, Edwin Torres, Tony Trigilio, G. C. Waldrep, Ellery Akers, Jane Hirshfield, Tracy Fuad, Henry Goldkamp, Beth Kephart, Laura Stanfill, Jesi Buell, Hunter Liguore, D. Harlan Wilson, Jacob C. Singer, Rodrigo Toscano, Suzanne Stein, Lance Olsen, Peter Wortsman, Carolyn Zaikowski, Ryan Bollenbach, Jeff Bursey, Dorothy Chan, Mike Corrao, Jill Darling, Tom DeBeauchamp, Alissa Hattman, Kristine Ong Muslim, and Tyrone Williams.
I’ve collected this superb literary art from 2020 in the form of an anthology, which you can read below. Excelsior!
Poetry
Four Poems
Rae Armantrout
Four Poems
Jaswinder Bolina
Four Poems
Gillian Cummings
The True Picture of the Past Whizzes By
Raymond de Borja
The History of Television
Michael Joyce
Glenn Shadix
Joe Milazzo
Soft Eclipse
Elizabeth Robinson
Three Poems
Ken Sparling
Four Poems
Edwin Torres
Nine Poems
Tony Trigilio
Four Poems
Hao Guang Tse
Three Poems
G. C. Waldrep
Fiction
Three Comics
Rosaire Appel
Chop
Tim Horvath and Rafaele Andrade
Lunagrad: Mek
Andrew Joron
Love Chronicles from the Octopodes: Episodes of the Emily Diaspora
Karen An-hwei Lee
A Minotaur in Bellevue
Norman Lock
However Many Sayings to Live and Die By
Robert Lopez
Beautiful Boy Falling
Lance Olsen
Three Fictions
Aimee Parkison
Disappearing Ink
Aimee Parkison and Meg Pokrass
Fiction
Pamela Ryder
Nonfiction
Poetry: Power That Seeps From Invisible Wattage
Will Alexander
George Floyd: Protracted Elevation That Raises the Sun
Will Alexander
A Message to Our Readers, Contributors, and Community
John Madera
To Dance with the Tiger: Call-Out, Cancel, and the Big C of Culture
Tyrone Williams
Folio: Micheline Aharonian Marcom
Excerpt from The Nothing on Which the Fire Depends
Micheline Aharonian Marcom
A Conversation with Micheline Aharonian Marcom
Shushan Avagyan
The Language of Discontent
Lisa Gulesserian
Rapture, a Bull-Hook, a Puzzle
Rikki Ducornet
“All War Is Deception as Is All History”: Structure and Time in The Daydreaming Boy
Jeffery Renard Allen
Draining the Sea and the Simulation of Trauma
J. S. DeYoung
What You See Is What You Don’t Know: Thoughts upon Entering and Exiting The Brick House
John Madera
Interviews
“Finding the Beauty Commensurate to the Pain”: Ellery Akers and Jane Hirshfield in Conversation
Ins and/or Outs: A Conversation with Tracy Fuad
Henry Goldkamp
The Writer, the Editor, and the Aftermath: Beth Kephart and Laura Stanfill in Conversation
L’éditeur de Babel: An Interview with Jesi Buell, Editor of Kernpunkt Press
Hunter Liguore
Interview with D. Harlan Wilson
Jacob C. Singer
Pandimía: A Poetics Dialogue
Rodrigo Toscano and Suzanne Stein
A Conversation with Lance Olsen
Peter Wortsman
“The houses in the hills are bad at being real”: Meghan Lamb on Spaces, Liminality, and Bodies
Carolyn Zaikowski
Reviews
Review of Johannes Göransson’s Poetry Against All
Ryan Bollenbach
Review of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978-1994
Jeff Bursey
Completing the Brushstroke: A Review of Shin Yu Pai’s ENSŌ
Dorothy Chan
Transcription as Isolation: On Ansgar Allen’s Wretch
Mike Corrao
On Poetry, Community, and Heroes: Reading Tyrone Williams
Jill Darling
On Douglas A. Martin’s Wolf
Tom DeBeauchamp
Loneliness and Plurality: Jennifer Calkins’s Fugitive Assemblage
Alissa Hattman
Notes on Daryll Delgado’s Post-Ecological Disaster Novel, Remains
Kristine Ong Muslim
Review of Chris Tysh’s Hotel des Archives: A Trilogy
Tyrone Williams
Podcast
Jamming Their Transmission: Episode 14, Life During the Contagion, Pt. 1
Jamming Their Transmission: Episode 15, Life During the Contagion, Pt. 2
Jamming Their Transmission: Episode 16, Life During the Contagion, Pt. 3
Jamming Their Transmission: Episode 17, Life During the Contagion, Pt. 4
Jamming Their Transmission, Episode 18: Conversation with Richard D. Wolff
Jamming Their Transmission, Episode 19: Conversation with Jasmine Syedullah
