TALIA ZAJAC Bebelplatz 1933 and 2005 i Smouldering and cracking open, the pages furling into black ash, tossed by the thousands, the books perish as words crinkle, blacken, turn to dust, putting Wells and Marx and Mann in the same circle of the inferno as young men hold torches and offer hemlock to Socrates: nobody wants to hear about death in Venice. ii The ash blows away the words, as I stand in Bebelplatz, where
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IAN WILLIAMS The Commute Nobody ever survives. — Margaret Atwood Ikemefuna certainly didn’tmake it through the forest, pot of palm wine on his head, with an entourage of slammer mouthed men who led him to believe he was going home. A lie, but they meant well. Machete to the neck. Then the unnecessary announcementMy father they have killed me, past perfect, as if he were already dead. And good weather, maps, company, trusty ship,
MOEZ SURANI Guy de Maupassant “What, then, did Flaubert understand by beauty, in the art he perused with so much fervour, with so much self-command? Let us hear a sympathetic commentator.” — Walter Pater I become Boswell around him. I see him Sundayswhen bark closes his face. He is an unhappy planet disregard thegarrulity of his letters he is somethingfrom Ovid becoming woman or lionon whim becoming delusionor child as the bark slams over his stomachand
JEN CURRIN A Bat Unveiled In the museum of land mines,my acquaintance fans her wings.Outside the sparrows catch fire.A tree falls to its knees.I become the sudden murderer,unable to recognize the radishesof my hands. The dictionary shudders. Again I cannot bealone. What is left of beautyI sop up with a napkin, believingit a limited supply. My only reading materialgives in to the blaze. And now I burn the legsof the chair, lest they touchthe ground.
ROBIN PATTERSON The Woods Behind my Father’s House I have been lost in these woods before.I have seen this tree, scarred and twisted,and not recognized it.My feet have paced this unfamiliar pathtripping over roots that were never there. The spaces between the trees are dark and forbidding.The ferns at my feet fill the unfamiliar forest floorand grow as high as my waist,hiding a whole other world under their fronds.I keep my hands close to my
BILL BISSETT ther was a strangr cum 2 town that longpurpul nite all th kiyots gone 2 sleepevreewun was krashd yu cudint see a thingth fog was sew cum in th smothring blankit th knarlee perls inth sky promising whatyu cud nevr get heer sum say ther was abarn door creek in th aweful moon lite sumherd a roostr crow way b4 dawn ther was astrangr cum 2
GUSTAVE MORIN What Can a Dog Do? What Can a Dog Do?appeared in CAROUSEL 17 (2005) — buy it here
JOHN B. Lee Drugging the Fishes It seemsthe things we flushare drugging the fishesin New York City, for instancethere’s enough Prozacin the East Riverto keepthe herring happy as housewivesin sitcoms all seasonproblem is — they’ve lost theirinterest in spawning, soif and when the males come-a-milting(though they mostly come-a-tilting)they keep their eggsto themselves, their roe in sacks like bobblesthey’re so swim-dizzy they’ve lost all desireeven the words ‘oviparous,spontaneous myosis, external fertilization,egg vent’leave them cold-blooded …even the
D.N. SIMMERS Letting an Umbrella Open Into the Wind I let an umbrella
Jade Wallace maps the Southern Ontario Gothic geographies of Anne Baldo’s debut short fiction collection Morse Code for Romantics (The Porcupine’s Quill, 2023). ISBN: 978-0-88984-456-8 | 208 pp | $19.95 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Lately I have sensed a revival of interest in Southern Ontario Gothic. In the past couple of years, multiple fiction debuts such as Erica McKeen’s Tear and Brooke Lockyer’s Burr have deftly employed the genre to tell contemporary stories, and
Jade Wallace traces a genealogy of philosophy and flora, in John Nyman‘s latest full-length poetry collection A Devil Every Day (Palimpsest Press, 2023). ISBN 978-1-990293-46-7 | 88 pp | $19.95 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY John Nyman’s sophomore poetry collection A Devil Every Day is a book preoccupied with contemporary incarnations of evil. Several of the poems in the book read like character studies of the Devil, as for instance ‘The Genuine Devil,’ where “The
Since our debut more than two years ago in September 2020, CAROUSEL’s USEREVIEW has published over 100 traditional, experimental and short-form capsule reviews. Last year, we debuted our Reviewer-in-Residence program, in which we published short capsule reviews from a single reviewer for three weeks in a row. Never ones to coast, we decided this year to expand our Reviewer-in-Residence program to shine an even brighter spotlight on individual reviewers’ critical practices. For 2023, we have
To our infinite dismay, we at USEREVIEW cannot possibly review all of the wonderful books that come out in any given year — but we can do our best to give a little extra attention to books written by our much-appreciated former, current and forthcoming CAROUSEL contributors! As 2022 ends, join us as we look back on some of the amazing books published by CAROUSEL contributors this year … #USEREVIEWEDNESDAY CHAPBOOKS NOVELS & NOVELLAS POETRY
In lieu of our regular weekly USEREVIEW posts, we at CAROUSEL will be using each Wednesday in December to highlight just a few of the many exciting artistic projects that former contributors have been at work on outside of the pages of our magazine. Up now: Anders Nilsen’s covers for new reissues of classic John Wyndham books! Past CAROUSEL contributor Anders Nilsen is the Los Angeles-based artist & author of ten books including Big Questions, The
Laila El Mugammarundergrad: a commonplace book (2021)ISBN 978-1-77779-150-6 | 108 pp | $19.99 CAD | BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Undergrad: a commonplace book is Laila El Mugammar’s self-published debut collection. It serves as a literary scrapbook from El Mugammar’s time as an undergraduate student at the University of Guelph. Featuring academic essays, personal essays, speeches and fiction, undergrad examines and illuminates anti-Blackness, Islamophobia, queerness, disordered eating and much more within the context of university campuses and
Remembering writer David Haskins (ca. 1945-2022) We at CAROUSEL were deeply sorry to hear of the passing of teacher, father, writer and friend to literature, David Haskins, of Grimsby, Ontario. An emigrant from post-war Britain, Haskins spent his entire adult life in Ontario, where he taught high school English for 36 years, and will continue to be fondly remembered by students as an engaged, thoughtful and kind teacher. As a writer, Haskins was the author
Vannessa BarnierSample Platter (Gap Riot Press, 2021)ISBN 978-1-77746-203-1 | 22 pp | $10 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Vannessa Barnier’s debut poetry chapbook, Sample Platter is honest, absurd and hilarious. Told in prose-poem style anecdotes, Barnier captures everyday moments of life with a sharp introspection. Barnier encounters various people throughout the stories: a therapist, a partner, convenience store workers, friends and more. There is an intimacy of shared moments with each one that settles in
As gender and genre-bending as its subject, this experimental review by Sarah Cavar skips between theory, memoir, and experimental poetry in order to keep pace with Johanna Hedva’s hybrid literary collection, Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain (Sming Sming Books + Wolfman Books, 2020), which “incorporates plays, performances, an encyclopedia, essays, autohagiography, hypnagogic and hypnapompic poems.” ISBN 978-1-953189-00-4 | 194 pp | $18 USD #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY What I needed to make this review: Twitter. My Chemex. Crystal
The word emporium conventionally refers not only to a commercial centre, but also to the centre of the brain where nerves and sensations meet. These disparate connotations coalesce and transform in Sanchari Sur’s traditional review of Aditi Machado’s sophomore book of poetry Emporium (Nightboat Books, 2020). Sur shows us how Machado envisions the poet as a radical barterer, plying her trade in the immaterial and invaluable realm of words and meaning. ISBN 978-1-64362-029-9 | 112
Jade Wallace imagines what it would be like to interview Tanis Franco‘s poetry debut Quarry (University of Calgary Press 2019) in this experimental review. Asking questions in their own words and then borrowing and remixing lines from the book to craft ‘answers,’ Wallace literalizes what it means for a text to enter the literary conversation. ISBN 978-1-55238-981-2 | 80 pp | $17.99 CAD / USD #CAROUSELreviews Jade: Let’s begin with the human body. How would