by Jessie Lynn McMains Since Stephen Sondheim died, I’ve had “Finishing the Hat” stuck in my head. “Finishing the Hat” is a song from Sondheim’s 1984 musical Sunday in the Park with George, and in some ways it is the consummate Sondheim song; one of the finest examples of the way he blended music and…
Tag: Jessie Lynn McMains
This is a Public Service Announcement with Xerox and Toner: writing & publishing perzines
by Jessie Lynn McMains Due to technical difficulties, I was unable to upload my video class about writing and publishing perzines as one single video, and chose to break it into parts. Part one of six is up now, the other five parts will be posted periodically throughout the next week on my YouTube channel….
Favorite Music of 2021
by Jessie Lynn McMains My 12 Favorite Albums and EPs Released in 2021 Anna B Savage – A Common TurnSoaring vocals, music that is somehow both sparse and expansive, achingly beautiful lyrics. Favorite track: Corncrakes. Arab Strap – As Days Get DarkTake the existential dread of some of Nick Cave’s work and mix it with…
Jesus of Western Avenue & The Apostles of Humboldt Park
by Jessie Lynn McMains All of Tony Fitzpatrick’s collages—from the largest to the smallest—are packed full. Each one is a visual list, a bright litany, of his loves and inspirations. In interviews and on his website, he mentions some of them: comics (two of his earliest influences were Dick Tracey and Mad Magazine), religious art…
All That’s Left/All I’ve Ever Known
by Jessie Lynn McMains All that’s left of my youth is a stack of notebooks with secrets scrawled in fading ink, a shoebox full of cassette tapes I’ve played so many times the sound has faded to ghost-static, and a plastic bin of zine flats, every word and picture peeling off one-by-one as the glue…
More than a Feeling: Writing and Publishing Perzines
UPDATE (12/17/21): The live workshop has been canceled, because it’s tomorrow but no one has registered yet. I will instead be recording a video presenting the information I would have presented in the workshop and posting it online (for free). My apologies if anyone was actually planning to attend, but as no one has registered…
“you would die, or be happy forever”
by Jessie Lynn McMains A couple months ago, I made a post on Facebook: What was the poem or poems that first made you really say WOW? The poems that felt like spells or prayers to you? The ones that felt like portrals to Elsewhere? The ones that gave you chills, made you cry, made…
Love Song during Riot with Many Voices
by Jessie Lynn McMains All through the summer of 2020, from May to September, I returned again and again to Lynda Hull’s poem “Love Song during Riot with many Voices.” I thought of it when police murdered Breonna Taylor in her apartment, and the protests began in Louisville, demanding justice. I thought of this man,…
One Long Longing
by Jessie Lynn McMains Homesick is just a state of mind for me, that I’m always missing someone or some place or something, I’m always trying to get back some imaginary somewhere. My life has been one long longing. Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation Anyone who knows me well—or has read enough of my writing—knows that…
Halloween (The Devil’s Ball)
by Jessie Lynn McMains for Jack Terricloth It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Hallowmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, & all of us! Come, do you hear it? The wind, calling you back to childhood. Calling you back to…
Racine Writer-In-Residence Project 