Jason Guriel

Toronto

Freelance Writer at Freelance

Writer. The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles, On Browsing, Forgotten Work. Words in @TheAtlantic @AirMailWeekly @Slate. Comic-strip in @CNandQ.

Articles

"This Makes That" Children's Book by Ivan Brunetti: Recommended - Air Mail

1 week ago | airmail.news | Jason Guriel

READ This Makes That For years, the Chicago-based cartoonist Ivan Brunetti taught art in college; new work was rare. Thankfully, the artist behind the comic “Schizo” and a number of New Yorker covers continues to produce books for kids. His latest entry, This Makes That, follows a classroom as it devises lemon-powered L.E.D.’s, “unpoppable” soap bubbles, and more. The drawings are immensely likable—and immediately recognizable.
We’re losing more than The Bay. We’re slowly losing our connections to the physical world

2 months ago | thespec.com | Jason Guriel

Every few months, I try to make it out to Cloverdale Mall in the west end of Toronto. It’s like visiting a loved one in hospice. The shops are dwindling; the place that cut my hair when I was a kid is still there, but the Coles, the only bookstore I could walk to, fled last year. Corporate bumf, printed on hoarding inside the mall, cheerfully speaks to Cloverdale’s coming evolution. Condos are poised to replace the mall. Last week’s news of the demise of the Hudson Bay, then, was hardly surprising.
What Do You Get When Godzilla Meets Jay Gatsby?

Nov 15, 2024 | airmail.news | Jason Guriel

READ Godzilla Monsterpiece Theatre King Kong, Mothra, the Japan Self-Defense Forces, the Avengers—Godzilla has faced many foes since his 1954 film debut. But in Tom Scioli’s new three-issue comic, Godzilla Monsterpiece Theatre, the monster destroys the West Egg mansion of Jay Gatsby. Gatsby rallies Thomas Edison, Sherlock Holmes, and other classic characters—all now in the public domain—to take on the scaly threat.
My Guilty Pleasure: I’m a Gen Xer Reading Comic Books Once Again

Jul 29, 2024 | thewalrus.ca | Jason Guriel

I was surprised as anyone when I became obsessed with comics again last year, at the advanced age of forty-five. As a kid, I loved reading G.I. Joe and The Amazing Spider-Man. I loved the way they materialized like magic on the newsstand every month, and I loved the fantastical contents: microclimates conjured with pencils, brushes, and Dr. Martin’s dyes. Later, as teenagers in the ’90s, my friends and I self-published our own comics, xeroxing pages drawn on Bristol board and hawking them downtown.
A Magnetic Personality

Jun 11, 2024 | poetryfoundation.org | Jason Guriel

About this Poet Jason Guriel is the author of Forgotten Work (Biblioasis, 2020), a verse novel written entirely in heroic couplets. Guriel is also the author of the poetry collection Satisfying Clicking Sound (Véhicule Press, 2014) and The Pigheaded Soul (The Porcupine's Quill, 2013), a collection of poems, essays, and... More About this Poet
Flaking-off Beautifully: on Anne Carson

Jun 4, 2024 | pnreview.co.uk | Jason Guriel

This article is taken from PN Review 196, Volume 37 Number 2, November - December 2010. Flaking-off Beautifully: on Anne Carson Twelve years ago, a woman visited my writing class and delivered a talk, something to do with sleep and Odysseus. I can’t remember much of what the woman said; to my undergraduate ears, she sounded like a muted trombone murmuring away: an adult out of Peanuts.
Falling Out of Love with Lyric Poetry

Feb 6, 2024 | themillions.com | Jason Guriel

Ten years ago, I stopped writing lyric poetry. I had a couple of slim, well-received collections to my name, and my poetry occasionally appeared in a magazine with pedigree, like Poetry. One time, an editor at The New Yorker even mailed a personalized, encouraging rejection on letterhead. (They rebuffed poems by paper in the good old days.) Still, the cupboard was no longer stocked with stanzas. Perhaps I needed a break, a sabbatical. A good lyric poem, after all, takes toil.
Falling Out of Love with Lyric Poetry

Feb 5, 2024 | everand.com | Jason Guriel

Ten years ago, I stopped writing lyric poetry. I had a couple of slim, well-received collections to my name, and my poetry occasionally appeared in a magazine with pedigree, like Poetry. One time, an editor at The New Yorker even mailed a personalized, encouraging rejection on letterhead. (They rebuffed poems by paper in the good old days.) Still, the cupboard was no longer stocked with stanzas. Perhaps I needed a break, a sabbatical. A good lyric poem, after all, takes toil.
The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles

Sep 27, 2023 | thewalrus.ca | Jason Guriel

In 2018, The Walrus published an excerpt from Jason Guriel’s then forthcoming Forgotten Work, an ambitious verse novel which would eventually appear in 2020—and which the New York Times would declare “unlikely, audacious and ingenious.” Last month, Biblioasis published Guriel’s second verse novel, The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles.
“I Am Stan,” Stan Lee Graphic Biography by Tom Scioli: Book Review by Jason Guriel

Sep 8, 2023 | airmail.news | Jason Guriel

I Am Stan: A Graphic Biography of the Legendary Stan Lee by Tom Scioli In the opening pages of Tom Scioli’s new graphic biography, I Am Stan, an elderly Stan Lee is signing autographs at an event. But the co-creator of Spider-Man, the X-Men, and other world-conquering I.P. is hesitant. “Stan Lee,” says the minder behind him. “S. T. A. N. L. E. E.” It’s a dark moment for Lee, a writer who helped bring so many brightly costumed heroes to print and a salesman who’s rarely silent over the course of the book.