Banango Lit

Banango is a literary blog that talks about exciting literature. We like to read stuff. We are also Banango Street, a literary journal. You can email us at banangolit (at) gmail (dot) com if you would like to send us stuff to look at, or you can send a link in our Ask box. We will try to look at it but we have learned to avoid making too many promises.

Also, email us if you feel like you would like to be a contributor for Banango. We would like that also.

Banango Writers

Justin Carter
Rachel Hyman
Diana Salier
Matt Margo
Katey Metcalf
Thom James
Jackson Nieuwland

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Literary Magazine Review: ILK Issue 1, Part 1

ILK is an online journal edited by Caroline Crew and Chris Emslie. The first issue just came out. I am going to discuss a few pieces from that issue right now instead of doing homework and finishing my MFA applications because the first issue is very good.

Madison Langston has three poems in this issue. These poems are ‘cute’ in some ways, ‘disturbing’ in other ways, but they are very good poems. They feel like they come out of the ‘alt-lit’ tradition more than any other piece in the journal does, which is why I am talking about them first. There are some really nice moments like:

I want to understand the differences
between happiness,
love, satisfaction, frustration,
an orgasm,
and what I feel while

I’m listening to a Lil Wayne song.

Parker Tettleton contributed two prose poems. This is one of the pieces. I really like it:

BLITHELY

I go where I can come back. Here likely is my least favorite word. Soliloquies are full of beer, a brim moans about strawberries in my mouth. I don’t when I know to get out.

The other piece is longer and a little better. I like how these pieces contains lots of individual lines that hit you in the face and say ‘hey, this is a truth, listen to it’.

Michael Koh’s piece in the issue is odd, I think. I like it, but it is odd. I’ve been mostly liking narrative or semi-narrative poems lately and I can’t really figure out ‘what’ is happening here, but I still enjoy reading it, because like the Tettleton piece, it contains lines that are strong and meaningful