Craft Corner: An Argument for Non-Linearity
Eggs for breakfast. Turkey sandwich for lunch. Spaghetti for dinner. Short stories and novels tend to use the same structure over and over again: linear. Probably because linear stories make sense. The story starts somewhere, character A makes a mistake or changes their life or meets character B, and then conflict arises out of that...
Featured Writer: Charles Fort + Interview
On Thursday October 26th at 7:30pm, Poet Charles Fort will be reading some of his work for the Fall 2023 Prout Chapel Reading Series at Bowling Green State University. The reading will be held in the Prout Chapel on the BGSU campus. The event is open to the public. Charles Fort has preserved a decades long...
Why We Chose It: “Forcemeat” by Henry Goldkamp
“Forcemeat” by Henry Goldkamp was selected for publication by Mid-American Review poetry staff for issue 42.1. “Forcemeat” brings you into a unique moment between two people as they play a game of deciding if something is more like a muskmelon or muskrat. “The felled log we set on this noon. // That would be muskmelon.” But, more...
Craft Corner: Code-Switching as Shapeshifting in Poetry
A poem that moves between languages has a special mystery. As a Mexican American writer, the Spanish/English code-switch speaks to me in a personal, almost mystical way. Through its agility, I feel the fluidity and tension of dual language, culture, myth, and perception. I sense the poem’s exploration of “otherness,” but also its “both-ness,” which...
Featured Writer: Benjamin Percy
On Thursday, October 5, Benjamin Percy visits Bowling Green State University as the 2023 guest for the Edwin H. Simmons Creative Minds Series. He will read from his work at the Donnell Theatre of the Wolfe Center, 7:30 pm. https://events.bgsu.edu/event/creative_minds_residency_benjamin_percy_keynote_address Benjamin Percy is known for world-building, but in some ways that term is misleading. He...
Why We Chose It: “Some Kinds of Drifter” by Justin Thurman
Mid-American Review fiction staff selected “Some Kinds of Drifter” by Justin Thurman for publication in Volume XLII. Thurman’s piece was selected for its overall strength but particularly for its nontraditional use of form and genre. The piece takes the form of an ethnography, detailing the different spiritual and cultural norms common amongst different groups of...
On Renia White’s Casual Conversation
Casual Conversation by Renia White. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, Ltd. 2022. 80 pages. $17.00. Paperback. Although I usually don’t have much patience for poetic metaphysics, the abstraction common in Casual Conversation didn’t keep me from effortlessly gliding from poem to poem. I can recall very few collections I’ve enjoyed that passed through the same zip code as...
An Interview with Gabrielle Bates
Gabrielle Bates is the author of the poetry collection Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023), a New York Times ‘The Shortlist’ pick and a Chicago Review of Books ‘must-read’ book of 2023. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, Bates currently lives in Seattle, where she works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium, co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon, and teaches occasionally through the University of Washington...
On Dustin Pearson’s A Season in Hell with Rimbaud
A Season in Hell with Rimbaud by Dustin Pearson. Rochester, NY. BOA Editions, Ltd. 2022. 96 pages. $17.00. Paperback. Dustin Pearson’s collection A Season in Hell with Rimbaud finds itself in conversation with Rimbaud and influenced by Dante as the speaker goes on a Dantean journey through Hell in search of his brother. Despite the influence of tradition...
An Interview with Nebraska State Poet Matt Mason
Matt Mason has run poetry workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus for the U.S. State Department and his poetry has appeared in The New York Times. Matt is the Nebraska State Poet and has received a Pushcart Prize as well as fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council. His work...
What We’re Reading, with Assistant Editor Mays Kuhail
I’ve been enjoying reading more poetry over the summer, and I’ve recently picked up If They Come for Us, a raw and poignant collection by Fatimah Asghar. I was instantly drawn to the rich themes of South-Asian culture, identity, and the undeniable link between past and present in the effects of political turmoil and violence. Asghar...