The History of Poetry Once the world was waiting for song when along came this. Some said it was a joke funny ha-ha but at the end too lachrymose to last. Others that it was writ holier than thou and should be catechized, then set to turgid dirges, wept over with gnashed fang, wr … | Continue reading
Justin Erik Halldór Smith in his own blog: Unlike talk of, say, badgers or ermine, talk of beavers seems always to be the overture to a joke. So powerful is the infection of the cloud of its strange humor that the beaver seems at least in part to blame for the widespread habit, a … | Continue reading
Sean Carroll in Preposterous Universe: It’s fun to spend time thinking about how other people should behave, but fortunately we also have an inner voice that keeps offering opinions about how we should behave ourselves: our conscience. Where did that come from? Today’s guest, Pat … | Continue reading
Noam Chomsky and Scott Casleton in the Boston Review: Scott Casleton: In the past you’ve suggested that the Democrats and Republicans aren’t too far apart where it counts, such as in their support for corporate power. Do you still think this, or is the small but growing shift in … | Continue reading
Emma Garman at The Paris Review: The life and career of the gifted Glaswegian writer Catherine Carswell was marked by such alarming and recurrent notoriety that her present obscurity is baffling. In 1908, still in her twenties and working as a newspaper critic, Carswell made head … | Continue reading
Sarah Beckwith at nonsite: “To read a text isn’t to discover new facts about it,” says Moi, “it is to figure out what it has to say to us.”6 Understanding, meaning as use, responsiveness, responsibility, acknowledgement, the precision and inheritance of language: these are Toril … | Continue reading
James Meek at the LRB: The truth, as strongly suggested in Eugene Onegin, is that Pushkin’s attitudes towards the country were as conflicted as the twin self the novel in verse projects. When he stayed at Mikhailovskoye after graduating from his elite Petersburg lycée he was both … | Continue reading
The night poetry danced with us Orlando 49 emblazoned on the back of a t-shirt worn by a white queer who looked through and past our table of Latinx, Indigenous, Black, Muslim queers right in front of her as if we never existed as if we were not sitting there laughing and thrivin … | Continue reading
George Packer in The Atlantic: No novel of the past century has had more influence than George Orwell’s 1984. The title, the adjectival form of the author’s last name, the vocabulary of the all-powerful Party that rules the superstate Oceania with the ideology of Ingsoc—doublethi … | Continue reading
Damian Carrington in The Guardian: The average person eats at least 50,000 particles of microplastic a year and breathes in a similar quantity, according to the first study to estimate human ingestion of plastic pollution. The true number is likely to be many times higher, as onl … | Continue reading
by Emily Ogden Because I wanted to write about something I believe in, my topic today is irony. The alert reader is already asking, can you believe in irony? The ironist is widely supposed to be a person who doesn’t really believe in anything. Disavowing her attachments as soon a … | Continue reading
Cup …—for Catherine Regec Mraz this is how I most remember her I’d have been maybe eight, I open the door to her house and hear the clock tick we have tea at her table I ask for grandpa’s cup which she brings from her pantry shelf and sets upon on the table pours hot… | Continue reading
by Joan Harvey What made him a great poet was the unprotesting willingness with which he yielded to the ‘curse’ of vulnerability to ‘human unsuccess’ on all levels of human existence—vulnerability to the crookedness of the desires, to the infidelities of the heart, to the injusti … | Continue reading
Sughra Raza. Mid-day Still. Chitwan Forest, Nepal, 2017. Digital photograph. | Continue reading
by Jeroen Bouterse The Big Bang Theory has been one of the most successful sitcoms in TV history. Last month it ended. In many ways, it ended a long way from where it had begun; many commentators have noticed how the show has evolved together with cultural norms in the past decad … | Continue reading
by Ashutosh Jogalekar The Doomsday Scenario, also known as the Copernican Principle, refers to a framework for thinking about the death of humanity. One can read all about it in a recent book by science writer William Poundstone. The principle was popularized mainly by the philos … | Continue reading
Two Poems by Muhammed Iqbal (1877-1938) Bright Rose You cannot loosen the heart’s knot, perhaps you have no heart no share in the turmoil of this garden where I yearn but gather no roses. Of what use is wisdom to me? Once out of the garden, you are at peace. I am anxious, scorche … | Continue reading
by Thomas O’Dwyer Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is not so much a book of fantastic adventures as a book of conversations (and pictures). It’s right there, in the first paragraph: “What is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?” Lewis Carroll and … | Continue reading
Fruit in a bowl in the kitchen of a B&B in Basel, Switzerland, in January of 2017. | Continue reading
by Mary Hrovat Books about how to write are so frequently described as life-changing and essential (usually by publishers, but sometimes by reviewers) that I was initially unmoved by enthusiastic reviews of Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose, by Francis-Noël Tho … | Continue reading
by Gabrielle C. Durham Did completing your taxes seem a Herculean task? Did cleaning your adolescent bedroom compare to mucking the Augean stables? Are you more jovial or saturnine by nature? Do you or anyone you know suffer from narcissism? Did you see the movie Titanic? Have yo … | Continue reading
Andy Clark at Edge: The big question that I keep asking myself at the moment is whether it’s possible that predictive processing, the vision of the predictive mind I’ve been working on lately, is as good as it seems to be. It keeps me awake a little bit at night wondering whether … | Continue reading
Jennifer Frazer in Scientific American: The fire chaser beetle, as its name implies, spends its life trying to find a forest fire. Why a creature would choose to enter a situation from which all other forest creatures are enthusiastically attempting to exit is a compelling questi … | Continue reading
Andy Purvis at IPBES: The IPBES Global Assessment estimated that 1 million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction. It also documents how human actions have changed many aspects of nature and its contributions to people; but species threatened with extinction reso … | Continue reading
Joseph Stiglitz in The Guardian: Advocates of the Green New Deal say there is great urgency in dealing with the climate crisis and highlight the scale and scope of what is required to combat it. They are right. They use the term “New Deal” to evoke the massive response by Frankli … | Continue reading
Bethany Augliere in Nautilus: Today, news of damaged or devastated coral reefs has become commonplace. Reefs face many threats, including bleaching, disease, overfishing, pollution and even invasive species. While the fates of the reefs may seem almost universally bleak, some sci … | Continue reading
Alexandra Bass in 1843 Magazine: One Saturday night a few months ago, a friend of mine who works in the tech industry announced the good news that she and her husband were expecting a baby. This September, they will engage in that quintessential parenting ritual: a mad dash to th … | Continue reading
David Papineau in Aeon: I’m against knowledge. Don’t get me wrong: I’m as keen on the facts as the next person. I’m no friend of fake news. I want truth rather than falsity. It is specifically knowledge I’m against, not true belief. Knowledge asks more of us than true belief, and … | Continue reading
Bhakti Shringarpure in Africa is Not a Country: When Frantz Fanon was in late stages of leukemia at age 36, he was flown to a hospital in Bethesda, Maryland in the United States, for surgery. His five-year-old son, Olivier, walked in on an ongoing blood transfusion and, seeing th … | Continue reading
Loren Balhorn in Jacobin: The Social Democratic Party (SPD) went into last week’s European elections with some bold, albeit vague campaign slogans: “Come together and make Europe strong” was one. “Europe is the answer” was another. Given the party’s humiliating performance, takin … | Continue reading
Henry Farrell interviews Sheri Berman over at the Washington Post: H.F. — Why is it difficult to construct well-functioning liberal democracy? S.B. — Another theme of “Democracy and Dictatorship” is that liberal democracy is so rare and difficult because it requires not only tran … | Continue reading
Olga Khazan in The Atlantic: I’ve timed calls from PR people to coincide with my commute home, since that’s the only “free” time I had to talk. On a recent cross-country trip to see my parents, I spent a day doing my work expenses. Constant pressure in my profession has made me g … | Continue reading
Alwyn W. Turner at Literary Review: What a difference a decade makes. In 1940 George Orwell published his eighth book, the essay collection Inside the Whale, but when the Nazis in the same year drew up a list of Britons to be arrested after the planned invasion, his name wasn’t i … | Continue reading
Marcel Theroux at The Guardian: Although it was first published in English in 1985, it’s only in the last 10 years or so that Vasily Grossman’s novel Life and Fate has been widely acclaimed as a masterpiece. The publication of Robert Chandler’s revised translation in 2006 was a t … | Continue reading
Tim Flannery at The New Statesman: Forty years ago, Nathaniel Rich tells us in Losing Earth, global warming was better understood by the general public and US politicians than at any time since. Moreover, the opportunity to broker a global treaty to reduce emissions of greenhouse … | Continue reading
Amy Sorkin in The New Yorker: As Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi roamed Normandy on Thursday (she had brought along a contingent of dozens of members of Congress for the official commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of D Day, including veterans from both sides of the … | Continue reading
This is not a small voice This is not a small voice you hear this is a large voice coming out of these cities. This is the voice of LaTanya. Kadesha. Shaniqua. This is the voice of Antoine. Darryl. Shaquille. Running over waters navigating the hallways of our school … | Continue reading
Terry Tempest Williams in The New York Times: You know a book has entered your bloodstream when the ground beneath your feet, once viewed as bedrock, suddenly becomes a roof to unknown worlds below. The British writer Robert Macfarlane has written such a book. “Underland: A Deep … | Continue reading
Stephanie Kelley in Five Books: Today we’re going to discuss the Canterbury Tales. You’ve just written a biography of Geoffrey Chaucer. What would someone learn from your biography about Chaucer that they might not have known before? Marion Turner: People who know a bit about Cha … | Continue reading
Scott Alexander in Slate Star Codex: “Culture is the secret of humanity’s success” sounds like the most vapid possible thesis. The Secret Of Our Success by anthropologist Joseph Henrich manages to be an amazing book anyway. Henrich wants to debunk (or at least clarify) a popular … | Continue reading
Ann Mah in Time: They called it the épuration sauvage, the wild purge, because it was spontaneous and unofficial. But, yes, it was savage, too. In the weeks and months following the D-Day landings of June 6, 1944, Allied troops and the resistance swept across France liberating to … | Continue reading
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Gurmeet Singh at 3:AM Magazine: Mendelssohn’s Wiki page says his grave has been reconstructed. Not surprising: grand historical narratives are everywhere legible in Berlin’s built environment. The Jewish cemetery where he’s buried became part of East Berlin after the war, falling … | Continue reading