Synopses & Reviews
The Mixed Blood publication is interested in the contemporary African-American avant-garde, writers experimenting with form and content in the post-Black Arts moment; but it is also interested in experimental practices (post-L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, Oulipo, etc.) more commonly associated with white writers. The publication--based on an ongoing Penn State readings and talks series --is unusual in its emphasis on literary innovation and its deliberate and very aggressive emphasis on race and the languages of and about race. The first issue featured work--poetry, essays on poetics--by Erica Hunt, Juliana Spahr, Amiri Baraka, Jen Hofer, and Ed Roberson. Mixed Blood 2 will feature poetry and essays by Duriel Harris, Meta Jones, Deborah Richards, and Evie Shockley and an introduction by Aldon Lynn Nielsen. All four writers were participants in Penn State's First Minute of a New Day: Black Poets for the 21st Century symposium.
Synopsis
In An Eochair (The Key), one of Mairtin O Cadhain's most Kafkaesque short stories (and one of his longest), J., a 'paper-keeper, ' one of the more junior civil servant positions, accidentally locks himself in his office when the key breaks in the lock. The story -- a mixture of satire, farce, black comedy and, ultimately, tragedy -- relates the efforts of J. and various other characters, his wife, civil service colleagues and superiors and others, to extricate himself from his predicament. However, all efforts to free J. must be in accordance with civil service protocols, and no such protocol exists for J.'s unique dilemma.