Jennifer Acker's Blog, page 2
August 11, 2025
Giving the Poem a Body: Megan Pinto interviews Lena Moses-Schmitt
LENA MOSES-SCHMITT
I think sometimes movement can be used to show how thought is made manifest outside the body. And also just more generally: when you leave the house, when you are walking, your thoughts change because your environment changes, and your body is changing. Moving is a way of your consciousness interacting with the world.
I think sometimes movement can be used to show how thought is made manifest outside the body. And also just more generally: when you leave the house, when you are walking, your thoughts change because your environment changes, and your body is changing. Moving is a way of your consciousness interacting with the world.
August 8, 2025
Magic Sentences: A Review of Miss Abracadabra
TERESE SVOBODA
This is the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York during the pre-Civil Rights era, the sticks. You’ve been there, but not with such generosity of spirit nor such precise sentences, which offer heft and clarity, and proceed their sinuous way down the page like one of that region’s rivers, weighted by the pull of print.
This is the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York during the pre-Civil Rights era, the sticks. You’ve been there, but not with such generosity of spirit nor such precise sentences, which offer heft and clarity, and proceed their sinuous way down the page like one of that region’s rivers, weighted by the pull of print.
August 7, 2025
For A Secret Grievance…
EMILIA PARDO BAZÁN
And it did indeed rival them. The large glass windows, the white marble display cases, the gleaming scales, the gilded brass taps, the wood-paneled ceiling, the banquettes lined with plush, green Utrecht velvet, the sparkling tins of canned food stacked in pyramids
And it did indeed rival them. The large glass windows, the white marble display cases, the gleaming scales, the gilded brass taps, the wood-paneled ceiling, the banquettes lined with plush, green Utrecht velvet, the sparkling tins of canned food stacked in pyramids
August 6, 2025
Four Ways of Setting the Table
CLARA CHIU
We are holding the edges of the fabric, / throwing the center into the air. / & even in dusk this cloth / billowing over our heads / makes a souvenir of home: / mother & child in snowglobe. / Yet we are warm here, beneath / this dome, & what light slips through / drapes the dining room white.
We are holding the edges of the fabric, / throwing the center into the air. / & even in dusk this cloth / billowing over our heads / makes a souvenir of home: / mother & child in snowglobe. / Yet we are warm here, beneath / this dome, & what light slips through / drapes the dining room white.
August 4, 2025
Broadening Access: A Fee-Free Submissions Week
Inspired by the mission and role of the town common, an egalitarian gathering place, The Common aims to foster the global exchange of diverse ideas and experiences. In an effort to remove barriers to access, The Common will open for fee-free submissions for one week.
July 31, 2025
July 2025 Poetry Feature: New Poems by our Contributors
GEOFFREY BROCK
Sing, O furrow-browed youth, / of the contrails scoring the sky, / bright as lines of cocaine / until, as they age, the eye // loses them to the blue… / Sing of the thin-skinned plane / that made those ephemeral clouds, / and of all that each contains: // the countless faceless strangers
Sing, O furrow-browed youth, / of the contrails scoring the sky, / bright as lines of cocaine / until, as they age, the eye // loses them to the blue… / Sing of the thin-skinned plane / that made those ephemeral clouds, / and of all that each contains: // the countless faceless strangers
July 30, 2025
Before They Traded Devers
AIDAN COOPER
I don’t know I’m not paying attention I’m crunching / peanut shells thinking Murakami began to write novels / because of baseball why don’t I / my dad’s grumpy / I’m vegetarian now & didn’t want a frank & yes it’s probably / a phase he’s probably right but it’s a good phase
I don’t know I’m not paying attention I’m crunching / peanut shells thinking Murakami began to write novels / because of baseball why don’t I / my dad’s grumpy / I’m vegetarian now & didn’t want a frank & yes it’s probably / a phase he’s probably right but it’s a good phase
July 25, 2025
Podcast: Mariah Rigg on “Target Island”
MARIAH RIGG
speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “Target Island,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue.
speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her story “Target Island,” which appears in The Common’s spring issue.
July 22, 2025
The Reading Life: Re-Reading The Reader: Book Clubs, Reading Aloud, and the Many Faces of Aunt Betsy
MARY JO SALTER
We bemoan the political landscape. We catch each other up on the doings of our grown children. We even do each other the touching favor of recounting affectionate stories about each other’s parents—all gone now, but unbelievably young when we first met them. Our own experiences of parenthood loom large.
We bemoan the political landscape. We catch each other up on the doings of our grown children. We even do each other the touching favor of recounting affectionate stories about each other’s parents—all gone now, but unbelievably young when we first met them. Our own experiences of parenthood loom large.
July 21, 2025
Main Character Syndrome: A Review of Stranger Than Fiction
Review by JULIA LICHTBLAU
Frank weaves the lives and work of thirty writers who redefined the novel, the era, and themselves into a story, each in their own way struggling with how to write amid previously unthinkable possibilities unleashed by violence and technology on society, sexuality, and language.
Frank weaves the lives and work of thirty writers who redefined the novel, the era, and themselves into a story, each in their own way struggling with how to write amid previously unthinkable possibilities unleashed by violence and technology on society, sexuality, and language.
