New England Review

Fall 2021: October Poetry Feature

New Books from NER Authors

The leaves outside are turning and gravity is covering our sidewalks in chestnuts and apples (Sir Isaac Newton would be smiling). With cooler weather on its way, we recommend grabbing a cup of tea and enjoying a title or two from these New England Review authors and translators.

Poet Jeffrey Franklin releases his second collection, Where We Lay Down (Kelsay Books). A “multifarious and expansive collection,” the book is split thematically into six explorations: Fathers and Sons, Making Love, Making War, Homing, Totem Animals, and Full Emptiness. Influenced by Franklin’s own interests in religion and spirituality, Where We Lay Down delves into human conditions around maturation and reflection. Franklin’s poem, “To a Student Who Reads ‘The Second Coming’ As Sexual Autobiography,” appeared in NER 22.3.

Machete (Knopf), the third collection from poet Tomás Q Morín, is released this month. Described as a “lyrical, dynamic, insightful collection, at once delicate and fierce, touching on climate, family, racism, growth, and life itself,” Machete explores suffering and its intersections with reactions of both anger and laughter. Morín’s poems have previously appeared in NER 35.3, NER 33.2, and NER 32.2; his piece “A Renaissance Mule” was published as an NER Digital in 2012. 

Jane Wong publishes her sophomore collection, How to Not Be Afraid of Anything (Alice James Books). Composed around central themes of migration and loss, grief and alienation, How to Not Be Afraid of Anything grapples with immigrant identities as made relational to histories past and present. Wong’s poem “I Haul a House Out of the Bay” was published in NER 39.4. 

My Wilderness: Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press) is the latest collection from poet Maxine Scates. Traversing the emotional landscapes of motherhood and memory through explorations of loss and empathy, My Wilderness “is a grave and beautiful archive of losses.” The book’s title poem, “My Wilderness,” appeared in NER 37.2. 

Poet and writer Victoria Chang publishes Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief with Milkweed Editions. Despite not being labelled explicitly as a poetry collection, Dear Memory encapsulates the “process of simultaneously shaping and being shaped, knowing that when a writer dips their pen into history, what emerges is poetry,” as Chang explores themes of immigrant identity, history, grief, and knowledge of the self through family relics and letters. Chang’s poetry has appeared in numerous issues since 2002, most recently NER 41.3 and NER 38.3. 

Yu Xiuhua’s Moonlight Rests on My Left Palm: Poems and Essays (Astra House) is released in English through collaboration with poet and NER translator Fiona Sze-Lorrain. Thematically organized around love and writing, on mortality, the natural world, and nostalgia, the collection’s poems and essays are “in conversation with each other,” as Yu utilizes the written form to grapple with family, home, and “the reality of disability in the context of a body’s urges and desires.” Sze-Lorrain’s translations have appeared in NER 40.3 and NER 36.2.

Visit our page on Bookshop.org for cumulative seasonal lists of NER author releases.

Red Herring

450px-Terrasse_d'un_café_de_Paris-Paul_Munhoven“Red Herring,” by Tomás Q. Morin, appeared in NER 32.2 (2011).

I say “my love” in a reluctant French,
even though I hate the French, not the people
who never did me harm, just the nectar-hearted
sounds of mon amour, mon chérie, that always
live in the right mouth on the brink
of tumbling into beauty, a sad truth
revealed to me when I overheard a socialite
ordering a café noisette on the Champs-Élysées
with the same river of honey
spilling from the lips of a street vendor
offering directions to the nearest toilet.

(read more)

M52519

A Renaissance Mule | By Tomás Q. Morín

Tomás Q. Morín

I once wished to God—or maybe it was Zeus, so steeped in mythology was I as a kid—that I would one day be as smart as the star of the Francis the Talking Mule films from the 1950s. Francis was a globetrotting, prickly Army mule—from the 123rd Mule Detachment, serial number M52519, to be exact. Each time someone expressed astonishment that a “dumb beast” like Francis could talk, he would quip, “I hope to kiss a duck I can talk” or “What trick is there to talking? Any fool can do it.” This brash character that would suffer no fools was adapted to the screen by David Stern from a novel he conceived while serving in the Army during World War II.

While to the unobservant all mules probably look alike, nothing could be further from the truth. Like humans, some mules are short, fat, or lean; mix in a blonde, brunette, or even the rare champagne coif and you have an infinite variety. Imagine James Dean’s mug with its long, handsome jaw on the stocky body of a Marlon Brando and then add the funny bone of a Rodney Dangerfield, and you have a good picture of Francis.

While a dapper mule with a dry sense of humor is certainly unique, I would not have wanted as a kid to emulate this mule as much as I did had he also not been whip-smart. In what may be my favorite scene from all seven movies, Francis is in his stall reading (yes, you read that correctly!) when he proclaims in the twanged, gravel voice of veteran character actor Chill Wills, “The cosine of light over infinity calculates out to X. Hmm… that figures.” He was reading Einstein! In a later scene, Francis recites case law while testifying on behalf of his perennial sidekick Peter Stirling, played by dance genius Donald O’Connor of Singin’ in the Rain. Francis thus completes the arc of the simple plot of every movie in the series: the mule  helps sad sack Peter get ahead, Peter gets into hot water, and Francis must reveal he can talk to  bail his friend out of trouble. While Francis might at first be reluctant to reveal his secret, in the end because he is nothing if not loyal to his friend, he always comes through for Peter.

In film after film, an animal maligned in our culture as an obstinate, sterile, genetic freak inspired me, as a child, to learn, read, and play with words. Now, when I get tired of hearing language that is guarded, hesitant, and stale, I turn to these movies and am reminded what it sounds like when we  bring  back sass and brio.

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NER Digital is a creative writing series for the web. Tomás Q. Morín is the winner of the 2012 APR/Honickman First Book Prize, for his collection A Larger Country. He is the co-editor with Mari L’Esperance of Coming Close: Poets Pay Tribute to Philip Levine as Teacher and Mentor. His poems have appeared in Threepenny Review, Slate, Boulevard, NER (32.2), and Narrative magazine. Read Morín’s NER poems “Royal Silence” and “Red Herring.”

Congratulations to NER Poets Tomas Q. Morin and Greg Wrenn

Tomás Q. Morin (32.2) is the winner of this year’s APR/Honickman First Book Prize for his manuscript A Larger Country. His book was chosen by this year’s guest judge, poet Tom Sleigh, who will also write an introduction for it.

Greg Wrenn (32.2) of San Francisco is the winner of the 2012 Brittingham Poetry Prize from the University of Wisconsin Press. His collection Centaur will be published by UW Press in 2013. Terrance Hayes selected the award winners.

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