D. H. Lawrence’s “Pomegranate”
Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Sometimes in life you get yelled at. No matter your moral fiber, it can’t be avoided all the time. It happens in Marine...
View ArticleShades of Red: On Indian Summer
Babie leto. The summer of old women. Even today, years after leaving Russia, that’s what I always call Indian summer in my head. The stress on the first syllable, the second merging seamlessly into...
View ArticleZeus, and Other News
On protectionism, e-books, and candlemakers. Biologist Edward O. Wilson and U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass on science and poetry. All the best books of 2012 lists that are fit to print, in one place....
View ArticleThe Immortality Chronicles: Part One
What have we not done to live forever? My research into the endless ways we’ve tried to avoid the unavoidable is released today as The Book of Immortality: The Science, Belief, and Magic Behind Living...
View ArticleBeneath the Yew Tree’s Shade
In the first of three excerpts from The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains, Thomas Laqueur explores the necrobotany of the yew tree, “the tree of the dead”—found in churchyards...
View ArticleWords Could Not Fell Me
Reciting sagas in the Westfjords of Iceland. All photos by Karl Steel Haymaking time had come, warm, dry, and cloudless, on a late summer’s morning roughly a millennium ago. All the men had gone out to...
View ArticleWords Could Not Fell Me
We’re away until January 4, but we’re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2015. Please enjoy, and have a happy New Year!All photos by Karl SteelReciting sagas in the Westfjords of...
View ArticleYou Are on Display: An Interview with Morgan Parker
Photo by Kwesi Abbensetts.Morgan Parker has a long résumé—she teaches and edits—that somehow hasn’t precluded a prolific career as a poet. Her first collection, Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up at...
View ArticleTo Heaven with Buraq, and Other News
Buraq with Taj Mahal, a poster from Delhi. Image: Sandria Freitag personal collection/Public Domain Review.As the Quran has it, Prophet Muhammad took a night trip to heaven aboard a trusty winged...
View ArticleThirty-One from Oaxaca
“31,” an exhibition of works on paper by Domenico Zindato, is at Andrew Edlin Gallery through June 4. Zindato, who was born in Italy, began the project after stopping by a small shop in Mexico City,...
View ArticleWhat We’re Reading: Disaster, Calamity, Ecstasy
From the cover of The Violins of Saint-Jacques. I bet you didn’t know that Patrick Leigh Fermor, recognized as Britain’s greatest travel writer during his lifetime, penned a novel, or that it was...
View ArticleStaff Picks: Medusa, Magic, and Moshfegh
T Kira Madden. Photo: Jac Martinez. T Kira Madden is magic. In her forthcoming memoir Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, she uses language new and strange but always devastatingly right. One of...
View ArticleStaff Picks: Hauntings, Hollywood, and Home
María Gainza. Photo: Rosana Schoijett. My favorite genre of novel is one I like to call “women interacting with art.” Membership is somewhat limited but disproportionately loved. On this shelf sits...
View ArticleThe Myths We Wear
Illustration by Eleonore Condo. Painting: Cornelis de Vos, Apollo Chasing Daphne, 1630, oil on canvas, 75.9″ × 81.4″. Shoes are humankind’s oldest invention to aid mobility. Thousands of years before a...
View ArticleAthena, Goddess of Copyediting
Ancient pottery depicting Athena and Enceladus fighting. Louvre Museum. Public domain. My first exposure to Greek mythology was at the Lyceum—not the famed Lykeion in Athens, where Aristotle and his...
View ArticleWords Could Not Fell Me
Reciting sagas in the Westfjords of Iceland. All photos by Karl Steel Haymaking time had come, warm, dry, and cloudless, on a late summer’s morning roughly a millennium ago. All the men had gone out to...
View ArticleWords Could Not Fell Me
We’re away until January 4, but we’re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2015. Please enjoy, and have a happy New Year! All photos by Karl Steel Reciting sagas in the Westfjords of Iceland....
View ArticleYou Are on Display: An Interview with Morgan Parker
Photo by Kwesi Abbensetts. Morgan Parker has a long résumé—she teaches and edits—that somehow hasn’t precluded a prolific career as a poet. Her first collection, Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up at...
View ArticleTo Heaven with Buraq, and Other News
Buraq with Taj Mahal, a poster from Delhi. Image: Sandria Freitag personal collection/Public Domain Review. As the Quran has it, Prophet Muhammad took a night trip to heaven aboard a trusty winged...
View ArticleThirty-One from Oaxaca
“31,” an exhibition of works on paper by Domenico Zindato, is at Andrew Edlin Gallery through June 4. Zindato, who was born in Italy, began the project after stopping by a small shop in Mexico City,...
View Article
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