Carmen Giménez Smith is the author of Odalisque in Pieces (U of Arizona P, 2009) and Casanova Variations (Dos Press, 2009). She is an assistant professor of creative writing at New Mexico State University, the publisher of Noemi Press, and the editor-in-chief of Puerto del Sol.

The Feral Issue

ns 73-74 | Fall 2009/Spring 2010

The "Feral Issue" presents work by a range of people, from those who have been doing animal studies all along to those newly exploring the field. If it has a leaning, it is to build a cultural materialist account of animals in our world. We hope that the writing here will give our readers a sense of what animal studies is and where it's going, and also add some new voices to its course.

Read this Issue

Published Spring/Summer 2008

Moonrock

by Carmen Giménez Smith | ns 70

My father stood watch
over night's deficient tidepool:
the weight of it so upon him,
he locked himself in the car to think.
By day he'd wear us
into onionskin. At night, he'd flee
to the driveway where he lived
in unkempt hair.
He was the phantom weeping
powdery tears into the ashtray.
He tattooed legal pads with a furious
manuscript about the world's
petty campaign to own him.
But then, I only saw the man
through glass, a disputed
and conspiratorial thing.

MR BOOKS

Critics at Work
ed. Jeffrey J. Williams.

Critics at Work offers a guided tour through the central, sometimes confusing and frequently controversial developments in contemporary literary and cultural criticism. The tour guides, however, are not distant observers but have been primary participants in those developments, and they report on theory, cultural studies, the literary canon, the recent focus on race, sexuality, and other identities, the state of the univerisity, and the role of the intellectual. Throughout, they consider the not always easy negotiation of politics and culture.

Purchase Critics at Work.