My parents don’t want me to walk the dog after dark; I tell them I’ll be back in an hour. Slide rules rule; crushes nearly crush me. I discover the body electric—how to handle high voltage. Kissing in a cave: our lips disappear but I can still feel them. Lifting the needle on the Hi-Fi to hear Side One, Track 3 of the Bookends album: “I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.” I can’t swallow the first day of schoo
Iowa City literature
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Fruition, for now: Brendan Spengler and Gilt Gambrel headline works-in-progress variety show
Brendan Spengler hangs his head and sighs: “If I don’t put a strict deadline on myself, I’ll work on something forever, and never call it finished.” It’s a near-universal…
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Do the Robot: ‘Cyborg Support Group’ reads this Friday at Fair Grounds
For those still mourning the absence of Strange Cage, the high-energy reading series hosted by former Little Village arts columnist Russell Jaffe at Fair Grounds…
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Book Plug: Stories of true crime
Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade By Walter Kirn The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas By Anand Giridharadas HBO’s latest hit, True Detective, shows just how far the detective story has come. Edgar Allen Poe’s The Murders at the Rue Morgue launched the genre’s formulaic […]
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Interview: Poet Stephen Sturgeon and book artist Candida Pagan’s unique approach to publishing
Local poet Stephen Sturgeon’s recent piece, The Ship, details the macabre account of the narrator’s travels down an unnamed river; with the narrative meandering…
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Becoming a Ghost: Losing touch
Through the dimming haze of an autumn sun I see smoke pillar above idle students awaiting busses. The fortunate ones remain engrossed by iPhones and Droids, each distanced from nearby strangers despite physical proximity. I pass through unobserved and untouched, ephemeral as a shadow on a cloudy day, and enter the cavernous building. Immediate smells […]
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Book Review: Rebecca Rotert’s ‘Last Night at the Blue Angel’
Rebecca Rotert’s debut novel, ‘Last Night at the Blue Angel’, is a literary page-turner with lovely prose and heart-wrenching relationships. It presents a singer on the brink of something big — be it fame, self-destruction or both. The singer’s name is Naomi, dysfunctional mother to Sophia, whose own name comes from a story of love and loss.
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Becoming a ghost: Losing worlds
As she speaks, I shiver and sense a shift as the objects around me expose themselves, becoming reduced to a skeletal framework with a mere capacity to hold worlds. A moment earlier, my world had been filled with concrete certainties: tangible and thick like the gold dome of the Old Capital shining proudly in the […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment, Hot Tin Roof
Hot Tin Roof: Johnny and Martha
When it was time for calving John Jr and Hank would always be at the ready 24/7. Sometimes it would be young Johnny sent by Jr to fetch Hank. And sometimes Martha would ride a pony over to Jr’s place even in the middle of the night. When it was time for calving, mother nature set the schedule. And calving was serious business because it meant a new animal to add to their small herds.
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Interview: Paul Ingram sheds light on his new book and talks about his rhyming verbal tick
For those of you who haven’t met Paul Ingram, he is an Iowa City icon and fixture at Prairie Lights Books. Like countless others, I have, over the years…
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IYWP Feature: Wavy World
By Madilyn, Student at Horace Mann Elementary Courtesy of the Iowa Youth Writing Program (IYWP) One wavy day in Wavy World, a happy fuzzy family with their pet Hashtag Cat were going on a UFO trip to Swirly town to meet mayor Fuzzy. On the way there, they found some weird metal thing sitting by […]
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Hot Tin Roof: Nonfiction, a love poem
Hot Tin Roof is a program to showcase current literary work produced in Iowa City. The series is organized and juried by representatives of three Iowa City-based cultural advocacy organizations: The Englert Theatre, Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature and Little Village magazine.
