Blog — Half Mystic

“These poems were a map of the ocean I’d crossed.” (Matt McBride on At the Mercy of the Flies)

“These poems were a map of the ocean I’d crossed.” (Matt McBride on At the Mercy of the Flies)

I wrote as a way to explain the world to myself—to feel like I had some agency, even if my only power was as a witness.

Literature, Music, Personal Essay, PoliticsGuestApril 24, 2026Matt McBride, Donald Trump, Joe Biden

“Songwriting helps me feel my way back into myself.” (An Interview With Savi Kaboo)

“Songwriting helps me feel my way back into myself.” (An Interview With Savi Kaboo)

Many of my songs are inspired by humanity’s relationship to nature—how we move toward and away from it, and what we lose or find in that process.

Music, InterviewsMia Arias TsangApril 6, 2026Savi Kaboo, Dounia, Lil Peep, Little Simz, Mac Miller, Jorja Smith, Empress Of, Mahalia

Announcing Half Mystic’s Nominees for the 2026 Pushcart Prize

Announcing Half Mystic’s Nominees for the 2026 Pushcart Prize

Our Pushcart Prize selections are landmarks & lighthouses; they are wryly tragic & agonisingly gentle; they live with one foot in the ancestral & one in the visionary.

Announcements, Literature, MusicTopaz WintersNovember 25, 2025Natalye Childress, Sophie Crocker, Adam Falkner, Rita Mookerjee, Jordan Silversmith

From the Editor: Willows Wake and Walk Away

From the Editor: Willows Wake and Walk Away

As it leads you through a world where healing moves with the patience of river water, may Willows Wake & Walk Away offer you a place to rest, to reckon, & to rise once more.

Announcements, From the Editor, Literature, MusicTopaz WintersNovember 18, 2025Haley Wooning, Kylie Ayn Yockey, Liam Xavier, Libby Jenner

“Once the need to conquer language fades, the poem has done its work.” (An Interview With Haley Wooning)

“Once the need to conquer language fades, the poem has done its work.” (An Interview With Haley Wooning)

There’s a certain shame in confessing we are missing something—or missing within something.

Interviews, Literature, MusicMia Arias TsangNovember 13, 2025Haley Wooning, Florence + the Machine, Björk, Joanna Newsom, Joe Hisaishi, Leonard Cohen, Joan Baez, Adrianne Lenker, Laura Veirs, Kate Bush, Neil Young

“What happens after we survive the unthinkable?” (Haley Wooning on Willows Wake and Walk Away)

“What happens after we survive the unthinkable?” (Haley Wooning on Willows Wake and Walk Away)

The knights keep watch as I try once again to name what can’t be named, to tell the story that keeps surviving me.

Literature, Music, Personal EssayGuestNovember 4, 2025Haley Wooning

Pulling the Sun Down: A Selection of Our Favourite Hybrid Magazines

Pulling the Sun Down: A Selection of Our Favourite Hybrid Magazines

Genre had to be invented, and it’s high time we start building artistic legacies beyond its walls.

Literature, Music, SelectionsLee AndersonSeptember 11, 2025

Introducing Vesper

Introducing Vesper

Bring us the dream you can’t wake from, & let us hold it under a while longer.

Announcements, MusicTopaz WintersAugust 18, 2025

From the Editor: The Sevdah Issue

From the Editor: The Sevdah Issue

The Sevdah issue shines best in its sideways revelations, exposing what we’ve always wanted in the shape of its absence.

“We are so filled with feeling, even the gods must relent.” (Angela Sucich on Sevdah)

“We are so filled with feeling, even the gods must relent.” (Angela Sucich on Sevdah)

Psyche’s desperate desire for Cupid evokes sevdah, the human condition humming like a sad organ across a mythopoetic soundscape.

Literature, History, MusicGuestJuly 7, 2025Zanin Berbić, Damir Imamovic, Lucius Apuleius, Hippocrates, Ovid, Homer