&Review no.2, Islands: "Winter is over if you want it"*

by Ryland Walker Knight

Mia Nolting is both my Close Personal Friend and—bias aside, promise—a talented artist. Her artwork has been featured in a number of make'm-proud outlets (including The New York Times Magazine) and she illustrated the young adult novel, Hold Still, written by her friend Nina LaCour. Mia's newest endeavor, among a perpetuity of creative output, is a print-and-online publication called &Review, which Mia started with her friend Rachel Pedderson, which just published its second issue, in which you can find a poem I wrote. I actually didn't write it to fit the theme of the issue, Islands, but I can see how it works in there. (What's funny, though, is how I've already rewritten the poem from the form in which it was published**. Not drastically, mind, but the third stanza's maybe denser now and not as jumpy; this offers a problem of the rhythm getting jammed but I trust the edit enough to say, here, that if you want to see it, drop me a line. Maybe I'll plop it in the comments below.) And, as befits anything bearing Mia's name, the design of the always-free better-than-a-zine is beautiful—and I'm pleased to see my poem next to an image of water, the image below. You can see the print version of Issue 2 in the pdf M+R have made available here (right click to download). Or, if you live in Portland, you will be able to grab a copy for your own two hands and two eyes this week (find out where here). We hope you do. There's other good stuff in there besides my start-n-stop efforts. If anything, make sure to look at the images Mia and Rachel curated on the site, which anybody in any city can see, which, just for you, I'll link to again right here.

* an alternate title for the poem (published as "No Answers") that attempts a more positive angle on the image of hurt I tried to get across in those lines.

** cf., the alternate title