Issue 1.1 Archives - LIBER Review

1.1 On the Cover

Charis Caputo

On the cover: “Audre” Elise Peterson’s digital collages are casually electrifying. “Audre,” on the cover, evokes Lorde’s distinct feminism by juxtaposing cozy intimacy and radical commitments. The last page of LIBER features Grace Jones circa 1985 perfectly balanced within Matisse’s La Danse (1909), effortlessly central. A writer, children’s book illustrator, and parent of a three-year-old, Peterson hosts the COOL MOMS podcast (recording live at SoHo House). In it, she interviews mothers who, like her, “prioritize their passions.” A longtime

Poetry Comment

Katha Pollitt

How thrilling to include poems by Joy Ladin in the very first issue of LIBER. She’s a wonderful and prolific poet, with nine books and counting. Her most recent, The Book of Anna, won this year’s National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. She is also the first trans woman to be tenured at an Orthodox Jewish university, Yeshiva, in New York City. Many of Ladin’s poems are long and deal in a deeply philosophical-religious way

Sarah Kane: Her Plays are Violent and Disgusting (and Got Me Through the Pandemic)

Noelle McManus

North Yorkshire, UK; Methuen Drama, 2008, 288 pp., $25.95, paperback A short synopsis of English playwright Sarah Kane’s 1995 play Blasted: Tabloid journalist Ian and his much-younger girlfriend, Cate, check into a hotel room. Ian makes several racist and homophobic comments and berates Cate’s intelligence. They discuss what seems to be a war going on around them. He coerces her into uncomfortable, violent sexual acts. She escapes through the bathroom window. A soldier bursts into

‘Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir’ by Margo Jefferson

Kathleen Rooney

PANTHEON, APRIL 2022, 208 PP. Titling a book can be a tall order —finding the perfect, concise combination of words that announces your aim to an audience and entices them to read it. Margo Jefferson’s latest electrifying work of nonfiction, Constructing a Nervous System, is superbly titled. A nervous system, of course, is the part of an organism that processes stimuli, then sends signals that allow the organism to respond. As an acclaimed critic,

Historical Failure: ‘Dickinson’ and ‘The Great’

Meg Whiteford

There exists a certain genre I’ve grown to love. I will describe it as “writer struggling with a historical failure.” I don’t mean that the failure itself is historic, but rather that the artist is failing to write about or depict a historical figure, most often another writer or artist. The genre includes books like Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage (the narrator struggling with a biography of D. H. Lawrence), the recent gem Doireann

‘Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You’ by Big Thief

Quinn Martin

4AD, FEBRUARY 2022 The title of Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, Big Thief’s fifth studio album, is a phrase which asks to be read twice. Appropriately, it has two births: the lyric first appeared on the track “anything,” off frontwoman Adrianne Lenker’s solo album songs. The transcendental universe of Lenker’s songwriting is our own: one in which the self is synonymous with the other and the atemporal world. Sonically, all of the

Three Poems by Joy Ladin

Joy Ladin

Four Seasons 2020-2021 Three owls hoot and answer the last full moon of a year of love and terror. * Heavy spring rain. No matter who wraps them, my mother’s legs keep weeping. * For the first time this summer, I’m not wrong when I hear the sound of water. * Wind in the branches, someone’s mother calling, someone else’s childhood skipping from yard to yard. Disability Time to get used to wearing mortality

Redneck Lives Matter

Chris Kraus

The writer and critic Chris Kraus (I Love Dick, Social Practices, After Kathy Acker, et al.) lived part-time on northern Minnesota’s Iron Range for seven years (2013– 2020), researching The Four Spent the Day Together, a novel inspired by a series of violent methamphetamine crimes involving teenagers. The narrative is intercut with police reports, court documents, text messages, interviews, and monologues. This piece is one of several studies culled from social media accounts and conversa-

Just Go

Charis Caputo

A still from Thelma & Louise (1991), the first road trip movie with women at the wheel. In the summer of 2021, in those halcyon months between vaccination and the Delta wave, I drove from New York to Los Angeles with my friend Julie. I had barely driven since high school, had never driven west, had taken only short road trips with boyfriends who never let me drive. Like everyone else in the world, Julie

Characters: They’re Just Like Us!

Rebecca Saltzman

Mrs. Dalloway realizes she left her wallet at home. Dorian Gray keeps his skin youthful by using a daily SPF, and also by having a cursed painting in the closet. Clytemnestra obsesses over true crime podcasts. Lady Macbeth gets period stains out of her favorite outfit. Finding himself transformed into a giant insect, Gregor Samsa is relieved to have an excuse to cancel plans.

Issue 1.1