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I wrote these two odes to Hercule Poirot in a fit of grief and admiration. Grief over a divorce and a cross-continental move, admiration for Agatha Christie’s famous detective—specifically, David Suchet’s exquisite portrayal of Poirot in the BBC series.
I have mostly written fiction, but in the wake of all that relationship/displacement...
I don’t quite remember when I fell in love with watches. My mother, a nurse, always wore one, even at home in the evenings, when she sat with a crossword puzzle or a book, done with taking pulses and BPs. I don’t remember my first watch, either, though I think it was a pocket watch and that my two brothers had them, too, probably birthday or...
NAR poetry editor Rachel Morgan reviews two books; Bright Stain by Francesca Bell and Kill Class by Nomi Stone. This piece appears in the Synecdoche of Spring Issue 304.2 and we are excited to share it with you online today.
Bright Stain by Francesca Bell, Red Hen Press, 2019,103p, paper $16.95 •
Bright Stain is Francesca Bell’s debut...
My poem “Sunfall with Bat House” was inspired by the University of Florida’s bat houses, some of the largest occupied urban bat houses in the world. A few years ago, I started taking my environmental writing classes to see the bats as part of a series of field trips. The bat houses have an interesting history and serve as an excellent example...
In three days I’m flying back to Florida for Thanksgiving. I won’t be going home for Christmas. That’s retail for you. If your family’s far, you pick one holiday. Otherwise you’re scheduled for the long haul.
I live in a collage of disappearances. We all do. While I’m writing this, California is dealing with its worst wildfire in recorded...
Not that long ago, a number of badly behaved men with huge reputations in arts and entertainment fell like dominoes in the media. I, like most people, watched from a distance: shocked, angered, disappointed. Hoping for the best for every victim involved, and admiring their courage.
One incidental bit of fallout: Writer’s Almanac was...
John Poch authored Horse Crippler (Echinocactus texensis) which appeared in North American Review, Volume 303.4. John gives us a background on this unusual plant which served as inspiration for his poem in today's blog post.
The Horse Crippler is a plant not many people experience. That’s mostly a good thing. Its awful 1-2 inch sturdy spines...
In my poem, “Essay on Granite” for the North American Review, I’m working with the sonnet and with traditional meter as my grounding forces - end states the poem seems to choose. Perhaps there is some sort of subconscious attraction to a particular form that can't be put into words, sound and sense and emotions gravitating toward a...
When I received an email from North American Review stating they wished to publish my poem, “The Florist Thinks,” I was surprised and delighted, as I had been reworking that poem for years, and was ready to give up on it. But after the initial shock wore away, I experienced the odd sensation of having one of the most painful parts of my life...
NAR poerty editor Rachel Morgan reviews three books; Flyover Country by Austin Smith, The Kindness of Crocodiles by Ann Struthers, and Rewriting the Body by Wyatt Townley. This piece appears in the Synecdoche of Winter Issue 304.1 and we are excited to share it with you online today.
Flyover Country by Austin Smith, Princeton University...
For a couple of summers during college, I worked as a lot boy at one of the massive car dealerships on South Tacoma Way (Neko Case wrote a song about the area, which nails the neighborhood’s lingering depression). As far as summer jobs go, it wasn’t a bad gig. I labored alone in a warehouse, detailing recently sold Buicks and Chevys, tearing...
I’ve nestled “Mary and the Machine,” published in Spring 2018 in the North American Review, into a Magical Stories folder on my computer. There are a few there. I never set out to write a “magical” story. A story, if it needs to be told, determines itself. These magical stories tend to be impossible to some degree, I suppose—the characters...
The North American Review is proud to be published at the University of Northern Iowa, located in Cedar Falls, Iowa. In keeping with our pride in our academic community, the North American Review is sharing interviews conducted for the Final Thursday Reading Series in Cedar Falls. Now in its 19th season, the Final Thursday Reading Series...
Most living things in West Tennessee evolved to blend with browns and greys in the winter, a snowless season of dead, shedded skins. That’s the color of deer and most snakes there. It’s the reason white squirrels were almost hawk-hunted to extinction in Kentucky a few years back. It’s easy then to notice daffodils late in the season, the...
It’s a familiar idea—the smallest difference having a huge impact.
It seems to come up especially often in sports conversations. While discussing the mechanics of Roger Federer’s game, for example, David Foster Wallace writes, “tennis is… a game of micrometers: vanishingly tiny changes around the moment of impact will have large effects...
I am the harsh sound a tool makes, a small cutting wheel scoring a surface, scribing a line. Briefly, intense heat is generated, briefly, the glass cries out, a hurting sound; they wound each other in their touching: steel and annealed glass.
The glazier is angry but careful, he taps along the line he’s made and breaks the glass with his...
The key components to a writing life—one would think they would be simple. A person sits down and writes. Alas, let’s admit from the outset that it’s more complicated than that. There is a life to live, and a living to earn. Thus one has a job, a family, perhaps a dog, a yard to mow, leaves to rake, a house to clean, a spiritual life to tend...
My grandfather was a professional fighter. My father, brother, and uncle were Division I college athletes. My father went on to coach high school athletics for many years, and my uncle spent a summer bouncing between NFL training camps before the Cowboys finally cut him during preseason. To say I was raised in a culture of sports is an...
Mary Frisbee’s Black Fin immediately draws us in with a gripping situation and holds our interest throughout. Twenty-seven year old Olive, given a probable medical death sentence, decides to take her own life to spare herself from an agonizing end, but in the very process of trying to kill herself, her plans change abruptly when she takes on...
Reading helps me through my highs and lows. It helps me shape my view of the world, helps me describe the ineffable, helps me make sense of old mysteries while stirring up new ones. I don’t always know the right thing to say to someone, but I usually have a poem or story to share. Some of my favorite books have disappeared into the hands...
Happy Holidays from the North American Review! In December of 1923, the North American Review published Winifred Kirkland's piece, "A Christmas City of the Old South". Winifred Kirkland wrote on a variety of subjects, including; religious pieces, histories on the girlhoods of famous women, and several juvenile books. Today we bring you "A...
I found a deer in the backyard today. It was dead.
I had gone out to mow the back terrace, a section of the yard that slopes down to the next street, and there was this deer there. I don't know if it was male or female, or how old it was.
There were lots of flies around its head, especially around its eyes. I think the flies were...
Last year, on Christmas Day, the poet Dick Allen passed away. The author of nine books of poetry and a former Poet Laureate of Connecticut, Dick was a formidable presence in American literature.
It was fitting that he died on Christmas, a day of birth. He would have appreciated the cyclical implication of that. His last published book was...
It is 2016 in the middle of winter.
However, MoMA is warm.
I am part of Star Black’s “Writing in Response to Art” class which meets on Saturdays. The course involves our ragtag team of writers heading to the museum of the day to write pieces inspired by the works there. Often, we head to the locations with only Professor Black’s prompts...
My primary interest as of recently is the manner in which a “dream narrative” functions. The visions we have in dreams seem to reflect the surrealist nature of our minds, and also seem suited to the writing of the dream as a poem. I have been working on dream narratives for the past few months and plan to compile them as a collection. It...
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