Does the Left Have a Future? Does the Left Have a Future?
With the Soviet model shattered forever, it is the social democratic one that is now in deep crisis in Western Europe. On the face of it, judging just by the results of June's Eu...
Jan 2, 1998 / Feature / Daniel Singer
Supping With the French Devil Supping With the French Devil
Cartoonists can beat journalists at their own game of first oversimplifying and then exaggerating.
Jan 2, 1998 / Feature / Daniel Singer
The Sound and the Furet The Sound and the Furet
History may not have come to a stop in 1989, but the public is still under the spell of the counterpoint in Francis Fukuyama's famous exercise in propaganda: Capitalism is eterna...
Jan 1, 1998 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Singer
Allen Weinstein’s Docudrama Allen Weinstein’s Docudrama
Let's start with the Random House press release, replete with "Praise for Perjury"--a reissue of Allen Weinstein's book on the Hiss-Chambers case.
Oct 16, 1997 / Books & the Arts / Victor Navasky
Heart of Whiteness Heart of Whiteness
Milton Friedman, Gary Bauer, William F. Buckley. Could we ask more of a cruise?
Oct 6, 1997 / Eric Alterman
The Adolescent Lockup The Adolescent Lockup
Not so long ago politicians campaigned by kissing babies. Today, they lock children in jail.
Jun 19, 1997 / Bruce Shapiro
The Marching Saint The Marching Saint
Staughton Lynd, although he would never admit it, is one of the visible saints of the modern American left.
May 22, 1997 / Books & the Arts / Paul Buhle
Last Night in Havana Last Night in Havana
Editor’s Note: Nation contributor Dan Wakefield alerted us to our role in helping to launch the poetry career of Richard Blanco, selected by the White House as the 2013 inaugural poet. Dan writes: “When I went to teach at Florida International University in the spring of 1994, I went to a student reading and was especially impressed by one of the poets, a young man named Richard Blanco. I asked if he would give me copies of the poems he read that night, and I picked out three of them I thought were worthy of publication and suggested I submit them to The Nation, where I have been a long-time contributor. Rick said none of his work had been published yet, and was happy for me to send the poems to Grace Shulman, the poetry editor. To my delight and to Rick’s, Shulman selected his poem “Last Night in Havana,” and eventually published it in The Nation (March 31, 1997). So The Nation was the first periodical to accept for publication the work of our new inaugural poet. (To thank me, Rick gave me my first guided tour of Little Havana, Miami’s legendary Cuban neighborhood.)” The palms sink willingly into the saffron ground. All I can map now is the marble veins of static rivers, the island coastline retreated like a hem from the sargasso patches of Caribbean. I think of you primo hermano, huddled on the edge of an Almendares curb last night your Greco shadow spilled over the street, and over the tracks stapled to the weeds below your bedroom window. Shawled in cobwebs of wind, we slapped at unreachable mosquitos as Havana’s tenements collapsed around us, enclosed us in yellow like the pages of old books or the stucco walls of a hollow chapel. You confessed you live with one foot ankled in the sand of a revolution, one Viking sole on the beach testing an unparted sea for the stag tide, the gulf wind, a legible puzzle of stars, the perfect moon that will increase your chances through the straits to my door, blistered, salted, but alive, to cry—Llegué hermano, llegué! And silence the sweep of labor trains in your window, the creak of your father’s wheelchair in the hall searching for a bottle of pills he will find empty, the slam of your eyelids forcing sleep. The bus tires are ready, bound with piano wire, and the sail will be complete with a few more scraps of linen Tia Delia will stitch together after midnights when the neighbors are asleep. Last night in Havana, your words bounced from your knees bent against your face and drowned with the lees in an empty bottle of bootleg wine you clutched around the neck and will keep to store fresh water.
Mar 31, 1997 / Books & the Arts / Richard Blanco