Abe Strapp and the Widow Caines viewed the world as a glass to their own visage and nothing within their sight was granted a life independent. Every creature beyond themselves existed only to serve their designs and appetites. For years that knowledge had lived in Bride as a persistent, formless discomfort and even now it was beyond her to outline or offer it in any detail.

“You oughten to speak so about her,” Solemn said.

“That woman would eat her own children,” Bride whispered.

Michael has been thinking about the nature of evil as manifested in a captivating sibling rivalry in Michael Crummey’s latest novel The Adversary, while Suzanne has been thinking about water, oceanic and fluvial identities, and the nature of the self in relation to other and to environment, through Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick—and Natalie Diaz’s Postcolonial Love Poem.

Michael Crummey: The Adversary.

Herman Melville: Moby-Dick.

Natalie Diaz: Postcolonial Love Poem.

Our previous episode on Moby-Dick.

Michael’s essay about Michael Crummey’s novel Sweetland: “Newfoundland Off the Map: Michael Crummey’s Sweetland”.

A quick Q&A with Michael Crummey about The Adversary.

Natalie Diaz reading the opening poem in Postcolonial Love Poem.

Natalie Diaz's poem "It Was the Animals".

A brief bio and some additional poems by Natalie Diaz.

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