MQR Sound

Note about this poem from Wendy Chen for MQR's Winter 2024 issue: This poem emerged out of my engagement with the work of Hélène Cixous. After reading her texts Dream I Tell You and Hyperdream —from which this poem borrows its title—I was thinking about the relationship between dreams, death, time, and family. At the time, I was trying my hand at keeping a dream journal, and this poem is cente...

A note about the poem from Samuel Cheney for MQR's Winter 2024 issue: This poem tracks a culminating series of coincidences. It celebrates the spooky correspondences and recursions the universe sometimes presents to us. The poem turns when the narrator happens upon James Salter’s story “The Destruction of the Goetheanum,” in which the "vast, brooding structure" of the Goetheanum appe...

A note about the poem from L.A. Johnson for MQR's Winter 2024 issue: After my father died, he was gone but his things were everywhere. Looking around my parents’ house, it was as if he were still alive. His death made the boundaries between the real and the imaginary murkier than ever, and my brain so badly wanted to be tricked—I would see his jacket by the door and think: Oh, he’s come back a...

A note about the poem from Joshua Robbins for MQR's Winter 2024 issue: This poem is one in a book length sequence of antiphonal exchanges between a contemporary Job-like speaker who’s met with a response from a God who is vindictive, lost, stubborn, self-conscious, etc. “Philomela in Texas” was one of those rare poems that settled very quickly once I saw my son twirling in his socks and heard...

A note about the poem from Andrea Cohen for MQR's Winter 2024 issue for our Winter 2024 issue: I first saw Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne in the Borghese Gallery about twenty-five years ago. That seeing has stayed with me—as has my eighth-grade copy of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology .

Read the text for this piece on the MQR website . Note about the poem from Noah  Arhm  Choi   for MQR's Fall 2023 issue "Transversions": While gender affirming care has singularly been one of the best things that has happened in my life, it has also meant that going to the Korean spa has no longer become an option with their binary locker rooms and my fears around discomfort and safe...

Read the text for this piece on the MQR website . Note about the poem from Melissa Range for MQR's Fall 2023 issue "Transversions" : In the decade I've spent working on my poetry collection Printer's Fist , which is about the abolitionist movement in eighteenth and nineteenth century America, I have dug through archives both digital and physical. One of my areas of investigat...

A note from Amy Sailer for MQR's Fall 2023 issue "Transversions": I started writing about William and Jane Morris just before getting engaged. Their marriage has given me a rich vocabulary to imagine my own. They built a beautiful home together, Red House, which they intended as an artist’s utopia, where they, their family, and their community of friends could create the home’s medie...

Read the text for this piece on the MQR website . Note from Cindy Juyoung Ok for MQR's Fall 2023 issue "Transversions": Source text combined and choreographed here includes studies, labels, and idioms.

Rachel Nelson reads "Diseases of American Slavery (the earth)" for MQR's Fall 2023 issue "Transversions". Read the text for this piece on the MQR website .

Rachel Nelson reads "Diseases of American Slavery (the desire)" for MQR's Fall 2023 issue "Transversions". Read the text for this piece on the MQR website .

Teresa Carmody reads an excerpt from their essay, "Moving the Inconsequential Loop: Somatics, Feminisms", for MQR 's Spring 2023 special issue, "SomaFlights".

Hari Alluri reads his poem, "Slow Time Simmer", from MQR 's Spring 2023 special issue, "SomaFlights".

Ashwini Bhasi reads her poem, "All Night I Traveled ",  from the Online Folio of  MQR' s Spring 2023 special issue, "SomaFlights".

Ashwini Bhasi reads her poem, "What did I do today ",  from the Online Folio of  MQR' s Spring 2023 special issue, "SomaFlights".

Cynthia Ling Lee reads her poem "fatigue" for MQR 's Spring 2023 special issue, "SomaFlights". Sound composition by Anna Friz.

Derek McPhatter reads his song, "Prayer for a Preistexx Dark ", from the Online Folio of MQR' s Spring 2023 special issue, "SomaFlights".

Lis Sanchez reads her poem, "Miracle of Trout", for MQR 's Winter 2023 issue.

Kelsey Zimmerman reads her poem "Not Michigan" from MQR' s Winter 2023 issue.

Carl Phillips reads three of his poems, "What Are We for What Are We," "Like So," "On Why I Cannot Promise", for MQR 's Winter 2023 issue.

Cassandra Whitaker reads her poem "states" for MQR' s Winter 2023 issue.

Susan Azar Porterfield reads her poem, "Alternative Facts" for MQR 's Winter 2023 issue.

Les James reads her poem "American Dreams / Wake Up Call", an online exclusive for MQR's Fall 2022 issue 'Fractured Union: American Democracy on the Brink'.

Christine Rhein reads her poem "Pandemic Playground", from MQR's Fall 2022 special issue, 'Fractured Union: American Democracy on the Brink'.

Arnisha Royston reads her poem "Headlines", from MQR'S Fall 2022 special issue 'Fractured Union: American Democracy on the Brink'.