Nathalie Ours-Choussat is the Editor in Chief of A Magazine curated by…, which biannually champions the unique voice of a fashion designer.

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BOMBlog’s Word Choice features original works of poetry, fiction, and art. This edition of Word Choice, selected by Jordan DeBor, features poetry by Jamie Quatro and art by Helen Brough.

Though “Prayer” uses the trope of natural disaster, I wrote the poem during a quiet, deeply private season of grief. Loss of any kind can feel, to the bereaved, as much an “act of God” as large-scale catastrophe. And certainly “acts of God,” both public and private, raise the classic existential question: if there is a “God of love” or a “Benevolent Spirit” behind the universe, why would he or she allow suffering and tragedy to exist (or have created a universe in which suffering had the potential to exist)? I suppose there are three responses: there is no such Spirit (atheism); or, if there is such a Spirit, s/he is either indifferent to human affairs (the Deist Prima Mobile) or unable to prevent suffering and evil (a sort of grandfatherly Benevolence, perpetually weeping); or else the Spirit behind all things is simply evil (unthinkable). To maintain belief in a wholly loving God who is powerful enough to prevent suffering but chooses to allow it for ultimately beneficent purposes beyond our present comprehension—this seems, to me, the supreme act of religious faith.
– Jaime Quatro

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Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon’s latest book is a lovely meditation on the concept of distance. Open Interval attempts to measure and name the distances between thoughts and bodies, celestial and/or physical.

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Keats’ work creates an absurd world that may be uncomfortable to visit, but forces us to examine our own in an entirely new context. Emily Nonko puts the questions to the quester.

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This week, From the Archive explores the exterior influences our interviewees have wrestled with—pressures that come at their artistic creations quietly from the side, and also those that come head-on.

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This June Alexis Knowlton spoke at The Drawing Center’s colloquium on the “Power of Art.” Her topic was “S.L.A.T.”, Super Lame Art Thematization; calling attention to the corruption of the artist’s intention in the presence of evil middlemen.

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BOMBlog’s Word Choice features original works of poetry, fiction, and art. This edition of Word Choice, selected by Galina Arnaut, features poetry by Paula Brancato and art by Rebecca Loyche.

“Even the fireflies linger” in Paula Brancato’s poem “And Here and There, a Kiss”; and don’t we all wish that the summer months would linger on as well? This season’s end is upon us once again, and I find myself stubbornly grasping on before it slips away into fall. Though “And Here and There, a Kiss” is more than a poem about a season, it captures the simultaneous tragedy and magic of that simple, suburban summer. It speaks to that wistful youth of growing up and those carefree days that eventually slip away from us all.
– Galina Arnaut

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What do poultry and poetry have to do with each other? Matthew Rohrer attempts to answer this question in his latest book of poems, A Plate of Chicken.

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Poet and essayist Kristin Prevallet talks to artists caraballo-farman about their series The Heirloom Plates, part of the exhibition Iran Inside Out at the Chelsea Art Museum through September 4th.

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I encountered Akilah Oliver’s most recent book A Toast in the House of Friends (Coffee House Press 2009) with a bit of trepidation as I read “An erudite, gripping manifesto of grief” on the back cover.

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