The daring viewpoint of a homophobe widow makes for a toe-curling, but also hopeful read in the riveting Korean bestseller by Kim Hye-jin, Concerning My Daughter, dealing with the loneliness and ostracism of a lesbian couple and a single elderly woman.
Jacqueline Schaalje
JACQUELINE SCHAALJE has published poetry and short fiction, most recently in The Friday Poem, Free State Review, California Quarterly, and Six Sentences, and forthcoming in The Comstock Review. She is a translation editor at MAYDAY. She earned her MA in English from the University of Amsterdam.
Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin
Review of Liminal and Nadir by Laura Fusco
translated from the Italian by Caroline Maldonado
reviewed by Jacqueline Schaalje
Liminal and Nadir, two poetry books by Laura Fusco, present the voices of refugees in as direct a way as possible so we can feel and recognize their experiences.
The Owner of the Sea by Richard Price
reviewed by Jacqueline Schaalje
The Owner of the Sea by British poet Richard Price, published by Carcanet, is a poetic retelling of three Inuit stories. It’s not a translation of those stories. They are based on folk stories told by elders and some other sources such as tales by the Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen. Price describes them as “poetry based on prose translations of live storytelling.” If you thought Inuit busy themselves with fishing and chewing seal skin all day long, let these poem refresh your perspective!
Mother and the Flowers
By Jacqueline Schaalje
Nine out of ten times, Mother hypnotized flowers not to sneeze. She taught other housewives to branch their spitzes, stick them out so they would all be prim donnas. Irksome they sprinkled pollen. Behind her elbow, they called her shrew and harridan. Minimalized in ro- tation, she peppered her devotees. Their landslip murk swelled with […]
