“Jones’ poetry often invokes a sense of intimate nostalgia — a warm thirst for a moment or a place that was, or that could have been. The verses change pace on a dime. They vibrate.” — Jairo Ramos at NPR: Code Switch. “we tested our faith in stories of birds and bees but […]
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This Writer’s On Fire: Kima Jones
The Butter
Sep 02, 2015
Liner Notes: Grand Opening, Grand Closing
The Butter
Sep 02, 2015
mensah demary’s previous Liner Notes columns for The Butter can be found here.
This will be brief.
Released in 2003, The Black Album was to be Jay Z’s finality before retirement. How, exactly, a rapper can retire still puzzles me. I assume a retired rapper refuses to rap, on the premise that he/she is now “retired” and therefore “doesn’t do that anymore.” But Michael Jordan still plays basketball, albeit in his personal gym, despite being retired.
Writers try to retire, which really means “maybe I’ll publish again, maybe I won’t, but if I don’t, it’s not because I’m no longer a good writer…it’s because I’m retired.” A failsafe against talent erosion, retirement is the ejector seat from a fighter jet now out of gas, nose-diving toward the earth.
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Literary Ladies Cage Fight: The Divine Libba Bray
The Butter
Aug 31, 2015
Laura Sook Duncombe’s previous Literary Ladies Cage Fight columns for The Butter can be found here.
Hey, gal-pals! Welcome to Literary Ladies Cage Fight: where women always win! I am Aphrodite, goddess of love, and my sister Artemis and I read tons of books (for YOUR pleasure, dear readers) and celebrate the awesome female protagonists…by pitting them against each other in head-to-head combat. We’re so glad you’re here!
It is true. I am Artemis, goddess of the hunt. Each fight’s rules are the same: two women, five rounds, one point for the winner of each round. At the end of the last round, whoever has the most points wins the match! This match, we are proud to bring you two heroines brought to life by the same author: Libba Bray. Her books span nearly every YA category (romance/mystery/supernatural/history/black comedy, just to name a few) and her characters represent every walk of life, ethnicity, and sexual orientation imaginable. If you haven’t checked her out, we strongly recommend it! There is something for everyone in her oeuvre. Today, our combatants are Gemma Doyle from A Great and Terrible Beauty and Evie O’Neill from The Diviners. Remember ladies, fight fair! Without further ado, let’s get ready to rumble!
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Buttered This Week: Aug 22-28
The Butter
Aug 28, 2015
“You are the butter to my bread, and the breath to my life” ― Julia Child
First of course, Roxane breaks the terrible news: The Butter is saying good-bye.
HUGE, teary thanks to all you brilliant Butter writers, so much butter to our bread. It’s been a joy to read and publish your work. And to you readers for loving it all as much as we did.
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A Buttery Farewell
The Butter
Aug 28, 2015
When Nicole and Mallory approached me and invited me to contribute to The Toast, was absolutely thrilled. I recognized what an amazing opportunity it was, particularly as a woman of color, to be able to run an online publication where I had editorial freedom and the ability to pay writers.
It has been all joy to run The Butter. I was able to publish truly amazing writing filled with wit and heart, humor and intelligence. I worked with columnists that gave me insight into this wonderful world around us, living with a lover, raising a modern family, living with disability, the ways in which music can shape our lives, how beloved literary characters might throw down, and, of course, we had, at the end, a warm, wise advice column.
But now, alas, The Butter is coming to an end.
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This Writer’s On Fire: Gabrielle Bellot
The Butter
Aug 28, 2015
“I am a woman who shouts into the sea.” from “Women and the Global Imagination: The Isle of Exile” at Prairie Schooner.
Who She Is
I found this bio online, but as usual, bios only tell you the facts: ‘Gabrielle Bellot, who has also written under J. Bellot, holds an MFA from Florida State University, where she is currently a PhD Candidate in fiction. She has contributed work to Prairie Schooner, The Missouri Review, Small Axe’s sx salon, The SouthEast Review, and other journals. She grew up in the Commonwealth of Dominica, where she has worked as a member of a committee for the Nature Island Literary Festival. She is working on her first novel.’
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World of Wonder: Corpse Flower
The Butter
Aug 27, 2015
Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s previous World of Wonder columns for The Butter can be found here.
With a heavy but happy and wonder-ously stinky heart, I’m sharing that my time here on The Butter has come to an end. As I mentioned last time, I’ve had to trim my outside projects to focus on a couple of book projects during my sabbatical. But not before ending this column with my favorite specimen of all time from the plant world, Amorphophallus titanium — the corpse flower.
The corpse flower has the largest inflorescence in the world, with the flower averaging 8 to 10 feet tall. It only grows in the wild in Indonesia, but several botanical gardens here in the U.S. have had much success growing them indoors. In 1937, the New York Botanical Gardens was the first in the country to successfully display one in full bloom. Each bloom only lasts about 24 hours, and indoors they only bloom every eight years or so.
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Liner Notes: Missing Afropunk
The Butter
Aug 26, 2015
mensah demary’s previous Liner Notes columns for The Butter can be found here.
I woke up this morning with a bit of anxiety. Sunday, Brooklyn: the gym loomed, as did multiple deadlines tumbling all around me, as if drowning in one of those playpens full of colorful plastic or rubber balls, and I had emails to answer, and documents to review, and decisions to make.
Adulthood awaited, and I didn’t even have brunch plans for the day—the worst realization. Still, life is a matter of degrees, when you think about it. One step leads to two, one sentence becomes a paragraph, and this is how I convinced myself to get on with the business.
My home is not necessarily a musical home; that is, all the music I hoard and treasure and discard and replace is rarely played loud enough for others—neighbors, primarily—to hear. I confine my music to the shitty Apple “earpods” that feel great in the ears, until I notice they’re not actually in my ears at all, but sort of sit there, like two lazy white cats, bemused and unbothered by the fair demands you make of them.
Sunday mornings, then, are quiet in terms of music (says this music columnist). But I do listen to my thoughts, made clearer as each minute post-sleep passes; the aqueous shimmer from already-forgotten dreams receding so I can figure out my next move.
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