I have found Gerard’s writing to be difficult to get through. It’s hard to find the “why” or “what for” in her essays and I wondered the same things in “The Mayor of Williams Park.” We meet G.W. Rolle, a … Continue reading →

“The Freeze-Dried Groom” by Margaret Atwood was one of those stories that kept getting stranger and stranger. Each turn managed to be a surprise, even though the title of the story gave away the biggest twist of all. As I … Continue reading →

  In “The Noiseness of Sleep,” I was most attracted to the alliteration. The first line of the poem begins with the hard, C of careful, and ends, similarly, with the word carry. Further down, in the poem’s third stanza, … Continue reading →

I’ve been enjoying the structure of Bright Dead Things because a group of poems tend to have one focus so it creates a story throughout the poems. “The Nosiness of Sleep” was a bit confusing to me. If it didn’t have … Continue reading →

This is a story devoted to Charlie Macauley, the man who has appeared and re-appeared only in glimpses. In the stories before this, we’re led to believe that Charlie is a sympathetic character, a troubled man who suffers from post-traumatic … Continue reading →

I was surprised, as I often am while reading Strout, that Charlie, the man we’d met in a previous chapter, acted so dishonestly.  We see him, in this chapter, engage with a prostitute called Tracy. He even treats his wife, … Continue reading →

To be honest, I struggle with pinpointing what this essay is about. It would be easy to say that it’s a recollection of losing innocence, but I want to know it’s more complicated than that. Gerard uses one-liners at the … Continue reading →

“The Hit-Thumb Theory” by Elizabeth Strout centered around the complexity of Charlie, a man who was cheating on his wife with a prostitute that he has fallen in love with. He resents everything about his wife but feels pity for … Continue reading →

After having read the poem “Bellow,” I realized the only punctuation Limón used were commas, and semi-colons —  except for a period at the very end. After having read the poem again, this time more carefully, I paused after the phrases: … Continue reading →

Sarah Gerard’s essay “Going Diamond” is about consumerism and development. These themes, which are national issues, are delivered to the reader through Gerard’s account of her parents’ time with Amway and also through fictionalized home-buying scenarios that follow a couple who … Continue reading →