Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024), The Parachutist (Sundress Publications, 2025) and Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man (Red Hen Press, 2025). He has been published in The Yale Review, The London Magazine, and in The Southern Review. He teaches generative workshops for Hugo House, Lighthouse Writers Workshops, The Writer’s Center, and elsewhere. Additionally, he serves as a Poetry Mentor in The Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program. I really fell in love with the poem ..read more

If you haven’t yet read the article on how this game changed my life, you can find it here. These are the instructions and materials for the board game adaptation of “Forcemeat” by Henry Goldkamp, which appeared in issue 42.1 of Mid-American Review. If you enjoy this game, please consider making a small donation to MAR here, or at least checking out Henry’s Instagram. Materials: Muskpaddles (recommended) Cards with random concepts written on them (Here is a PDF of MAR’s cards. Honestly, though, a random word generator will do. That includes your brain.) A Google sprea ..read more

Our favorite game is Muskmelon or Muskrat. Think of anything in the world, then ask: Is it closer to a muskmelon, or a muskrat?                     ––Henry Goldkamp, “Forcemeat,” Mid-American Review, issue 42.1 That’s it. That’s the game that “Forcemeat” is built around. Before adapting this poem into a full-blown board game, I liked it just fine. Even while playing it, I had no idea how drastically this remix would change my experience with the poem. Expanding on it gave me the vocabulary to ar ..read more

Swan Wife by Sara Moore Wagner. San Diego, CA: Cider Press Review, 2022. 88 pages. $18.95. Paper. A book of poetry that simultaneously frightens and beguiles is a rare treasure; and Swan Wife, by Sara Moore Wagner, does precisely that. These original poems are often startling in their fearlessness and beauty. Each piece resonates with the astounding strangeness of everyday life and creates shifting worlds that are both fairytale and madness. The sheer weirdness of metaphor drew me in immediately, and Wagner reveals herself as an expert craftsman of the surreal image, the internal met ..read more

On Thursday February 1st at 7:30pm, Poet and writer George Looney will be reading some of his work for the Spring 2024 Prout Chapel Reading Series at Bowling Green State University. The reading will be held in the Prout Chapel on the BGSU campus. The event is open to the public. George Looney has nourished a decades long career as a successful writer, editor, and educator; his career has produced several collections of award-winning work: including, 13 collections of poetry and 4 collections of prose.   Looney’s work has been published in countless literary journals and anthologies s ..read more

“Do Not Hold the Birds” by Carlene Kucharczyk was selected for publication by Mid-American Review poetry staff in Volume XLII, Number 1. When I read this poem, I can’t help but think of those little workshops that Home Depot, Lowe’s, and other home improvement retailers held back in the day. The ones kids would be dragged to by their parents on Saturday mornings. They’d be handed planks of wood, hammers, nails, screws, and other tools they had no clue how to use. An aproned employee wearing a ball cap would walk everyone through how to build whatever was on the agenda for the day. Mo ..read more

Amorak Huey is the author of four collections of poetry: Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021); Boom Box (Sundress Publications, 2019); Seducing the Asparagus Queen (Cloudbank Books, 2018), winner of the Vern Rutsala Poetry Prize; and Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress Publications, 2015). He is also the author of two poetry chapbooks: The Insomniac Circus (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2014) and A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road (Porkbelly Press, 2016). He is the co-author, with W. Todd Kaneko ..read more

On Thursday October 26th at 7:30pm, Poet Charles Fort will be reading some of his work for the Fall 2023 Prout Chapel Reading Series at Bowling Green State University. The reading will be held in the Prout Chapel on the BGSU campus. The event is open to the public. Charles Fort has preserved a decades long career that has produced 16 full-length books and chapbooks of poetry which include: The Town Clock Burning (St. Andrews Press) and We Did Not Fear the Father: New and Selected Poems (Red Hen Press). Fort’s poetry has appeared in countless literary journals and antho ..read more

“Forcemeat” by Henry Goldkamp was selected for publication by Mid-American Review poetry staff for issue 42.1. “Forcemeat” brings you into a unique moment between two people as they play a game of deciding if something is more like a muskmelon or muskrat. “The felled log we set on this noon. // That would be muskmelon.” But, more than a game, these images take you as a reader through an emotional journey that is set by the speaker but up to the reader to interpret. The form and spacing works to guide you through the piece, to pause at the right times, to experience the new. “Forcemea ..read more

A poem that moves between languages has a special mystery. As a Mexican American writer, the Spanish/English code-switch speaks to me in a personal, almost mystical way. Through its agility, I feel the fluidity and tension of dual language, culture, myth, and perception. I sense the poem’s exploration of “otherness,” but also its “both-ness,” which especially fascinates me. What type of experience would compel a writer to enmesh two languages to communicate meaning? What is gained through the mergence, or the mezcla (mix), and the semi-obscurity of blending languages? I think that th ..read more