I didn’t know it was live until a child began picking leaves from the fronds, letting them drop to the floor like those long hospital minutes.
No one stopped her, bent as we were to our tight economy of form paperwork, hoping if we fill it right, insurance will come through this time.
I’d been so often I could recite the questions asked in neat typed rows. The TV, above us like the eye of God, kept up its own bright conversation.
The fern, just at child height, was finally picked bare, a frond spindling out—as if to mark for us all the writing on the wall.
Renee Emerson is the author of the poetry collections Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing 2014), Threshing Floor (Jacar Press 2016), and Church Ladies (Fernwood Press 2022). She is also the author of the middle grade novel Why Silas Miller Must Learn to Ride a Bike(Wintergoose Publishing 2022). She lives in the Midwest with her husband and children.
Kenli Dossholds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.
In Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility (Belle Point Press, 2023), Anna Laura Reeve draws readers into a stark landscape of myth-making, at times unflinchingly intimate while at others sweeping and vast. Through her visceral and frank accounting of motherhood and the orbiting discussions of fertility, identity, and mother-children relationships in the modern chaos of our world, Reeve forges a new mythology for mothers that defies all expectations; she acknowledges the rippling, tender underbelly of motherhood, its fears and wonders, its failings and surrenders. A vivid background of the natural world is woven within the poetry collection, providing another plait in this intricate braid of rich imagery and a stark eco-poetics that converses with our changing landscapes. At its heart, this collection feels like a battle cry for women, for mothers, and for holding onto all the wonderful, terrible threads of identity in the midst of perfect obliteration.
The collection opens with “Ars Poetica,” a poem almost confessional in nature, in which Reeve describes waking early in the morning to write before “It must be time / to wake my daughter, make the lunches” (xi). And thus, the split between artist and mother, something Reeve grapples with throughout the collection, begins. Reeve’s poem “Entrapment” speaks poignantly to this again, describing a distaste for the domestic in poetry:
“Reading poetry as a teenager, phrases
like “my daughter,” “my son,” or “as I fold laundry”
extinguished interest like the smell of shit. The firm thud
of a diaper tossed in the trash
seemed to echo.
“Domestic tranquility” suffocated, like oil
On seawater.” (Reeve 61)
But Reeve challenges such discounting or disavowment of the domestic in her work by weaving her own myths and candor around it, wilding and bearing witness to the vacillating bleakness and brashness of motherhood.
The first part of her collection opens with “The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale” a contained accounting of the earliest days of motherhood. The poem depicts the immediate aftermath of giving birth with a haunting stillness, power in the silence, and the smallest of details. Instead of a time of unfettered and easy joy, as modern media would often like to portray giving birth, Reeve provides and unflinching account of the pain and fear so often experienced by new mothers, describing how a body that has just given birth is treated “like when you empty your bag into the trash / scooping, shaking” (3) with another line following starkly: “my own body sewn back together with steel / or plastic, still bleeding” (6). Indeed, the domestic world that Reeve illuminates is at times wild in its waves of changing emotions—cresting in moments of despair and frustration and ebbing back in moments of wordless relief.
As the collection progresses, the contained world of mother and child expands to encompass the Southern Appalachian landscape, with the second section of the collection providing extensive and rich observation of the changing seasons passing over flora and fauna, and the mountains so often returned to in Reeve’s poems. The cyclical changing of the seasons and the vegetation, death and rebirth, parallel Reeve’s exploration of fertility and miscarriage, and the raw hope and devastation that accompanies these cycles. The poem “Trying” spins into an extended metaphor in which reproduction becomes the tending of crops, and a woman’s pelvis becomes the field, another kind of domestic care, laced with a stinging desperation:
“When the farm’s bright February seedlings
Faded pink and purple in the greenhouse, starved
By nutrient-poor potting media, we started over.” (Reeve 28)
Indeed, in this section, the landscape and the body become deeply intertwined, with the conclusion of this section. “For Southern Appalachia” in which Reeve writes, “Blood thickens on the uterine walls for two weeks, then / sheds. The ouroboros belongs to me, and the crow, / cicada, and scoliid wasp” (43). Such lines evoke a melancholy acceptance and even gratitude for the cycle of life and death.
Situated within the realm of the domestic, Reeve defies conceptions of motherhood and its singular identity in a string of poems within the last section of the collection. The “Mad Mother” makes several appearances in the titles of pieces, all of which speak to a similar theme of resistance against the surrendering of all other identities at the feet of motherhood. “The Mad Mother Discovers a Third Way” and “The Mad Mother Joins the Resistance” speak to societal expectations placed upon mothers: “Good mothers take care of everyone else” (Reeve 68). Reeve deals a snarling and triumphant rebuke against these ideals with the repeated words “Defy it” (68), providing a quasi-mantra to mothers with “your work is the real work. The real work is defiance” (69). What Reeve calls for is a return to the self, exultant and sacred, in the face of societal expectations placed upon the good wife, the good mother.
In “The Mad Mother Envies a Widow” she avows that “the artist who is a mother splits herself in two” (Reeve 81). Here Reeve calls for a restitching, a returning to the self, something that she seems to be moving toward throughout the collection. Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility is a challenge to that split, an accounting of that split in order to make it whole in a new wild and beautiful way.
Addie Dodge is a student at Colorado College pursuing a B.A. in psychology with a minor in English. She is a writer currently working as an editor for her college’s literary magazine, Cipher, and is also a clinical intern at a domestic violence shelter in Colorado. She enjoys reading and hiking in the mountains in her free time.
Welcome back to Lyric Essentials, where we invite authors to share the work of their favorite poets. This month, Ashley Hajimirsadeghi (former Lyric Essentials editor and an all-around Sundress staff contributor!) joins us to discuss the work of Kim Hyesoon and the importance of female poetry, translation, and how everyone needs a break at submitting to marinate in ideas. As always, we hope you enjoy as much as we did.
Ryleigh Wann: When was the first time you read Kim Hyesoon’s work? Why did it stand out to you then?
Ashley Hajimirsadeghi: The first time I read Kim Hyesoon I was a freshman in college. I’d just moved back from South Korea after studying Korean at Ewha Womans University, and to curb the sadness of leaving behind a country I really loved, I was finding all of these ways to stay connected to the culture. I purchased a copy of Kim’s Autobiography of Death on a whim after reading about how she was one of the leading female poets in Korea–and one of the few who gets translated and brought into broader international discussions of literature made by Korean women.
What struck me then–and still strikes me–is how experimental Kim is with her work, and how unapologetically female it is. Autobiography of Death is specifically a reaction to the Sewol tragedy in 2014, but Kim generally uses the grotesque in a way that reminds me of abject theory, of artists like Meret Oppenheim and Cindy Sherman. It’s something I began to realize as an eighteen-year-old and now study today.
AH: I really do believe reading the work of women writers like Kim Hyesoon really helped hone in this instinct to focus on women’s stories. It was by consuming stories like these that I realized as a writer I was more comfortable anchoring pieces in narratives versus abstract concepts–and because of that, I began to lean more into documentary and ethnographic poetics. Reading Kim’s work also reminded me of translation and the power behind who and what gets translated–I wanted more from Korean women writers, and while we’re going through quite a bit of a Korean culture renaissance recently, it made me realize I wanted to read more broadly and translate myself. So I do Bengali poetry translations in my free time with books I sourced from a Bangladeshi bookstore owner in Jackson Heights, Queens. You learn a lot about language, power, and intentionality when you do this kind of work.
RW: Your chapbook, Cartography of Trauma, has a beautiful cover and title. What does this collection explore and what was your writing process like?
AH: Ironically, a lot of these poems are from high school and beginning of college. When it comes to exploration, I was in the beginning stages of thinking about how trauma is a ripple effect across periods, and I wanted to really hone in on women’s experiences. I have a tendency to blur fiction with reality, while delving into history, but I want to be really intentional and careful with the work I’m doing. Some of it is personal, some of it is research, but with fictional bends. I say I’m an accidental poet; I was a devoted fiction writer who kind of fell into this.
RW: What have you been up to lately (life, work, anything!)? Got any news to share?
AH: Right now I’m in my third semester of graduate school and preparing for my thesis. It’s going to be on colonial Korean women’s literature, so writers like Kim Myeong-sun, and this concept of hybridity as a form of self-expression for those suffering from the double colonization involved with the patriarchy. I’m trying to turn this into a digital humanities project, so maybe I’ll open it up to broader Asian feminist writers like Qiu Jin (if I have the energy).
Besides that, I’ve been taking a cute little break from submitting to marinate in my ideas and writing. I find it so liberating to step away from the submitting grind and just write. I’ve been doing this a lot more lately, and I think it’s helped my practice as a writer.
Kim Hyesoon is one of the most influential contemporary poets of South Korea. She is the first female poet to receive the prestigious Midang and Kim Su-yong awards, and her collections include I’m OK, I’m Pig! (Bloodaxe Books, 2014), Poor Love Machine (Action Books, 2016), and Autobiography of Death (New Directions, 2018). Kim lives in Seoul and teaches creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.
Ashley Hajimirsadeghi is an Iranian American multimedia artist, writer, and journalist currently pursuing an M.A. in Global Humanities at Towson University. Her writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Passages North, The Cortland Review, Salamander, RHINO, Salt Hill, and The Journal, among others. She is the Co-Editor-in-Chief at Mud Season Review, a former Brooklyn Poets Fellow, and a contributing writer and film critic at MovieWeb. She can be found at www.ashleyhajimirsadeghi.com // Instagram: @nassarine
Ryleigh Wann (she/her) hails from Michigan and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. She earned an MFA from UNC Wilmington where she taught poetry and served as the comics editor for Ecotone. Her writing can be found in The McNeese Review, Longleaf Review, The Shore, and elsewhere. You can visit her website at ryleighwann.com
In a speech I was forced to give at the end of my senior year of high school, I spoke about books and the way that the stories I read growing up showed me how to be. To articulate my point, I used a quote from a young adult novel in which the plot centered around demon-hunting teenagers tasked with saving the world. The crowd did not need to know that fact. What they instead knew was that the book that I was quoting was entirely correct, irrespective of the absurdity of its plotline. The quote being, “One must always be careful of books and what is inside of them, for words have the power to change us.”
Now, as a senior in college, those words remain as true as they were back then. Reading gave me perspective, an imagination, aspirations, and a world beyond the comfort of my hometown. I could sit on a bench in my neighborhood and read about examples of bravery, war, love, betrayal, and triumph—and I did, because these things were not happening in Bradenton, Florida. Trust me, I looked.
I scoured swampy tree lines for vampires, werewolves, and any other supernatural being that might present itself. I opened many doors searching for Narnia, stared at the base of tree trunks wishing for rabbit holes to appear, directing me towards Wonderland. I waited for the letter summoning me to Hogwarts. Instead, I found retention ponds, alligators, and summer afternoons that were averagely above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. After doing my audit on the extraordinary, I came to the conclusion that magic, if it did exist, was not willing to present itself to me unless it were in the form of a couple hundred pages at a time. A childhood that was wondrous in its own right was made magical through literature. I was never “The Chosen One,” but I sure loved reading about them.
I am often thankful that the illustrated version of Alice In Wonderland was available in my elementary school library, because I was able to read the words “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” setting a standard for imagination.
My love for stories and storytelling have brought me everywhere I’ve dreamed. Most unexpectedly, I realized that sports offer some of the greatest stories of the real world—triumph, tragedy, unimaginable loss, and unbelievable comeback.
For me, literature transcends the boundaries of reality, transforming ordinary moments into extraordinary tales. When it rains and thunders, I cannot help but joke to my friends that this is the sort of weather that vampires prefer for a baseball game—a joke about the iconic scene from Twilight.
In a book, words can create a world, a person, a feeling. If that is not magic, then I am unsure what could ever constitute. And so, how could one not want to work with literature and stories? I am thrilled to be starting this internship with Sundress Publications as I enter my final semester of college. It is a pleasure to delve deeper into the enchanting worlds of literature and in this final chapter of my academic journey, I am eager to contribute to the literary industry where each story holds the power to change us.
Caitlin Mulqueen is a senior at the University of Tennessee majoring in English and Journalism. She loves reading, playing piano, watching sports, and the Oxford comma. She has worked as an Editorial Graphics Production intern at ESPN, is a copy editor at The Daily Beacon, a student writer for Tennessee Athletics, a graphics and video operator for the SEC Network, and a marketing/social media intern for the Knoxville Ice Bears. With the majority of her undergraduate work being in sports media, literary media has remained her sincerest passion, finding stories that come out of sports to be as moving as those from literature.
You dug the seed, white as a tooth, from the sour flesh and juice of a half-grapefruit sugared and eaten on break. Pushed it deep with your thumb in the scoop of dirt you stole in a Styrofoam cup from the neglected corner office fern.
Takes some careful attention to coax the green shoot to grow tall as your child in the near-sunless technology-gray cubicle where you spent day after day thinking up what metal and plastic can take the place of the parts of knees worn thin from sixty years of hard use.
When Smith and Nephew laid you off, some decades later, you’d always say it was the best thing you did there.
Renee Emerson is the author of the poetry collections Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing 2014), Threshing Floor (Jacar Press 2016), and Church Ladies (Fernwood Press 2022). She is also the author of the middle grade novel Why Silas Miller Must Learn to Ride a Bike(Wintergoose Publishing 2022). She lives in the Midwest with her husband and children.
Kenli Dossholds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Kenli Doss, is from Hushby Nikki Ummel (Belle Point Press 2023).
And He Takes and He Takes and He Takes
I. Tess marks time with her daughter’s body: bones grow in cadence to the hourglass slip of sand grains
after an overcast beach day Tess rinses soap suds and Sarasota sugar sand from her daughter’s skin
Elah: the valley where David slay Goliath הלאה קמע Emek HaElah named for overcoming for the slaughter of giants
Elah’s hair tickles kneecaps swishes like a skirt
Tess braids her daughter’s hair every morning lays hands on every inch of coarse curl then ropes the thick braid around her daughter’s waist
she tethers Elah to her five-year-old body
as old as Tess’ father is dead
as he withered & scabbed on a worn futon cushion
Elah grew strong in the womb
Tess prayed for the strength to raise her ןֶבֶ֙א eben stone of help take aim at her תָיְלָּג Golyath
II. She bore Elah in mourning in a black maternity dress finger-painted her daughter with afterbirth forced her to bear witness as תָיְלָּג Golyath the revealer giant who uncovers lingered in the corner
Grief stitched itself into pituitary coaxed forth a manic rush of HGH
Elah is large for her age the x-ray reveals a skeleton two years too old
םֶצֶע etsem bones/substance/self too big for her body
Elah is five her skeleton is seven a cage fit to burst her ribs bars of iron her bones of bronze
Tess stuffs her own mouth with fig leaves until she chokes on ךֶּֽתְראְַפִּת: tipharah Glory Be
Glory Be Glory Be
Nikki Ummel is a queer artist and has been published by Gulf Coast, The Georgia Review, Black Lawrence Press, and others. She is the 2022 recipient of the Leslie McGrath Poetry Prize and 2023 recipient of the Juxtaprose Poetry Award for her manuscript, Bloom. Nikki is the co-founder of LMNL, an arts organization focused on readings, workshops, and residencies. She has two poetry chapbooks, Hush (Belle Point Press, 2022) and Bayou Sonata (NOLA DNA, 2023), funded by the New Orleans’ Jazz and Heritage Foundation.
Kenli Dossholds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Kenli Doss, is from Hushby Nikki Ummel (Belle Point Press 2023).
Altar
We make ourselves anew: wash each other's bodies in frankincense and myrrh, adorn each other's arms in bracelets of gold.
We are both mortar and pestle. We grind our bones down for creation, bury our dust deep, seeds we water with mouths
of yes. We breathe deep, roots we grow with lips of oh.
We spread palms across the floor & prepare to embrace the gods who, when called, come.
Nikki Ummel is a queer writer, editor, and educator in New Orleans. Nikki’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly, The Adroit Journal, The Georgia Review, and more. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and twice awarded an Academy of American Poets Award. She is the 2022 winner of the Leslie McGrath Poetry Prize. You can find her wandering around Holy Cross with her beautiful dog and equally beautiful partner.
Kenli Dossholds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Kenli Doss, is from Hushby Nikki Ummel (Belle Point Press 2023).
After the Flood
We took with us things immediate: dog leash by the door, overripe bananas, fresh underwear folded in the basket by the stairs. it was not enough. We wrung our hands nightly, hundreds of miles away. Word of mouth birthed new rivers within us.
All washed clean. We wait for the river water to stop being greedy. Lifetimes. What will they say, our descendants, when our home reemerges, when the water recedes, of our chipped pho bowls, the blown glass bong? Will they know the love we shared? Our record player, clammed shut. Still spinning Fats Domino.
Nikki Ummel is a queer writer, editor, and educator in New Orleans. Nikki’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly, The Adroit Journal, The Georgia Review, and more. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and twice awarded an Academy of American Poets Award. She is the 2022 winner of the Leslie McGrath Poetry Prize. You can find her wandering around Holy Cross with her beautiful dog and equally beautiful partner.
Kenli Dossholds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Kenli Doss, is from Hushby Nikki Ummel (Belle Point Press 2023).
Self-Portrait as Godmother
As the moon rises, I lift him from the crib, his fingers curling around my hair, pulled by the whims
of his dreams. My feet in soft shag, he swathes my swaying hips, lays his head on my chest. Humming Moonlight Sonata, I press my lips to his cradle cap. The moon
is high as I (knowing soon he will rise, seek my side) lay him down again.
I sweep hair from his eyes, nibble the tip of his ear, and revel in his smile, projected from his nighttime palace.
Door cracked, I hear him find the crib’s edge, pull himself to stand before his cry breaks midnight hush. My personal call to prayer. We repeat: sleeping child, sleepless caregiver, midnight snack maker, monster under the bed slayer. Permanently stained purveyor of wooden blocks and perpetual peeker of those hidden boos.
I lift him from the crib. The moon sets.
Nikki Ummel is a queer writer, editor, and educator in New Orleans. Nikki’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly, The Adroit Journal, The Georgia Review, and more. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and twice awarded an Academy of American Poets Award. She is the 2022 winner of the Leslie McGrath Poetry Prize. You can find her wandering around Holy Cross with her beautiful dog and equally beautiful partner.
Kenli Dossholds a BA in English and a BA in Theatre-Performance from Jacksonville State University. She is a freelance writer and actress based out of Alabama, and she spends her free time painting scenes from nature or writing poetry for her mom. Ken’s works appear in Something Else (a JSU literary arts journal), Bonemilk II by Gutslut Press, Snowflake Magazine, The Shakespeare Project’s Romeo and Juliet Study Guide and A Midsummer Night’s Dream Study Guide, and The White Cresset Arts Journal.
A personal growth narrative applies twofold to Jared Joseph’s A Book About Myself Called Hell (KERNPUNKT Press, 2022). In the book, which reads almost like a travel diary, Joseph documents his reading process of Dante’s Inferno, an epic poem in which Dante journeys through Hell as a living being. The parallel narratives for Dante and Joseph reveal the nested nature of the book’s themes, mirroring and re-forming like the concentric circles of Hell.
A Book About Myself Called Hell is a truly impressive work of critiquing and weaving, of joking and wondering, and it is funny. Joseph does it all intentionally, with nary a misplaced comma, and by the end I felt devastatingly seen and understood. The book is precisely human. I recognized my soul’s questions mirrored in the confusion and absurdity of both Joseph’s and Dante’s wanderings. The sentiment is captured perfectly in Job 9:12, which is featured in the book as an epigraph: “Who can say to Him, what are you doing?”. Who is running this life of ours? How can we ask what on earth is going on?
Joseph’s book unfolds in three sections. First, there is a brief introduction to Inferno and why Joseph is reading. The middle is made up of critical commentaries for each canto. Finally, Joseph puts together a multiple-choice section with upside-down answers, reading like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel. This last part enhances the book’s conversational nature; Joseph is telling the readers a story and interjecting with context and anecdotes, to which we respond, but all we say in the end is why is Hell so funny and why can’t we laugh?
The book is adventurous and searching, perhaps because it is somehow a compilation of asked, unanswered, and re-asked questions, occasionally specific but often metaphysical in nature. This essence is what made me feel understood and impressed at the same time: somehow, through a lot of swearing and crude analogies, Joseph pares away the bullshit and gets at some philosophical truth. The absurd humor of the book hinges on a tension between the ancient and the modern, and Joseph bridges the gap through continuous questions and eventual answers. He accurately dissects the structure of Inferno, referencing Dante’s life and numerological affiliations (Beatrice, basically), and analyzing the terza rima rhyme structure that reinforces the structure of the narrative. As well as this technical efficiency, Joseph demonstrates an intimate understanding of the soul struggle which pierces Inferno and carries into his own book: how can we make sense of this strange, contradictory existence that is human? Many little inversions reinforce the idea of heaven being hell, hell being life, and the journey out of hell being downwards to get back up, such as “they [finally] get to wet ground” (Joseph 25). Hell becomes a home for all the comically absurd, and the comically absurd include a lot of questions.
Some of the genius of the work is that, in almost every canto’s commentary, a reference offered earlier is revisited in some sensible, conclusive way, such that everything feels very satisfying. Joseph brings us into his thoughts as he reads Inferno, reminding us that he is laughing with us at all the absurdity, and tying things back together when the questions start to get too big.I invite readers who have not read Inferno, either recently or at all, into Joseph’s narrative for the eccentric father-son relationship of Dante and Virgil, and for the hilarity.
For those with an interest in Dante, Classics, humor, or the existential, this will prove an absolutely worthwhile read. Joseph demonstrates understanding of historical context, accurately touching on Florentine political conflicts and the tension between antiquity and Christian orthodoxy in the Italian Renaissance era. The whole project is kind of lovely because today’s angst at Covid-19, climate change, and the death of God is comparable somehow with that of the dreamy intellectual of the Middle Ages, stuck between pagan antiquity’s distant paradise and the reality of Christendom and plague. Either this was already apparent to Joseph, or he picked a really good quarantine read. In either case, A Book About Myself Called Hell makes sense. It is roaringly funny and intimately beautiful.
Isabelle Whittall is pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in combined Philosophy and Political Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She co-hosts the radio show Hail! Discordia! on CITR 101.9fm, and is an Editorial Board Member of UBC’s Journal of Philosophical Enquiries.
