It was that – ‘the value of the painting’, as if it needed repeating – that was most overbearingly pressed upon her. It was an artwork like no other, the collector explained, as he laboriously, reluctantly, and over the course of several hours, handed the oil painting to the conservationist. She nodded politely every few minutes. He seemed nervous to part with the thing.
It wasn’t much to look at, as the collector deprecatingly – perhaps a touch defensively – conceded. A fairly plain, oil-on-canvas representation of a nice day. Cheap oil on cheap canvas, at that. A bright sun, some slapdash trees and their misaligned shadows, people standing gaily at the edge of a lake. Nothing reflected in the water, undisturbed by ripples, ducks, or debris.…
The Bitter Kind – Tara Lynn Masih and James Claffey
The spread of COVID-19 has greatly impacted the human experience of 2020 across the world. In addition to our shared illness—and our losses of loved ones, income, and stability—our attempts to combat the virus interrupt our ongoing need and search for human connection. Many of us are feeling painfully isolated. Even in these strange times, though, books continue to provide insight into these particularly human emotions, and they are a source of connection in and of themselves. One such book is The Bitter Kind.
The Bitter Kind by Tara Lynn Masih and James Claffey (Oct. 2020, Červená Barva Press) is a fascinating lyric novelette divided between two alternating points of view: Stela, a survivor of childhood abuse that follows her into a transient adulthood, and Brandy, a Chippewa orphan, a seer, deeply in tune with nature, and a drifter.It’s…
I can’t say the name of the school, but I guarantee you’ve heard of it, a world-renowned elementary school that looks like it should be the kind of bucolic liberal arts college where Donna Tartt might murder undergrads, only it was in Manhattan. That’s all I’ll say. I don’t want to give you too many clues. Legally, I can’t.
I was introduced to the twins my first day. The headmistress had told me about their family during orientation. “We give all our students extra special attention,” she said. “We give the twinses extraordinary special attention.” She then gave me an extraordinarily slow wink. There were three sets of twins in this family. Thus, twinses. I was the only person who seemed to think that odd. Or be bothered by that grammatical choice.…
TAK Erzinger is an American/Swiss poet and artist with a Colombian background. Her poetry has been published by The Curlew, The Beautiful Space Journal, The Rising Phoenix Review, among many others, and her debut chapbook, found: between the trees, came out last year through Grey Borders Books. It chronicles a life interrupted by mental illness (specifically, PTSD) and explores how love and nature can help us find forgiveness and healing. She’s recently found a publisher for her second, lengthier poetry collection, been accepted to a writers/artist residency in Italy, and much more.
In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum chats with Erzinger about her artistry (both written and drawn), overcoming and normalizing mental illness, coping with the current pandemic and quarantine, and much more!…
