The Muse of History The Muse of History
I. CLIO “let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth” The past’s fantasia cannot hold or let us go. Flycatcher catching itself in the pool’s glint gaze, Samarkand where Tamerlane…
Feb 9, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Cynthia Zarin
Late Afternoon Late Afternoon
(for Alice Truax) Three pairs of binoculars but which one works— why do we say “pair” when we mean one? What we see is what we are—the swimming pool’s black shadow eye-mote, a mole…
Feb 9, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Cynthia Zarin
Anxiety Anxiety
Cat claws on the heart’s tin roof, each breath a locomotive running off the rails, the switching signal’s warning rat-a-tat, I’m up too early, the alphabet net snags and tears, mot…
Feb 9, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Cynthia Zarin
The Rise and Resilience of Black Lives Matter The Rise and Resilience of Black Lives Matter
Wesley Lowery’s new book charts the origins of a movement
Feb 9, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Nathalie Baptiste
Marx’s Revenge Marx’s Revenge
He may have lived a 19th-century life, but his ideas keep coming back with a vengeance.
Feb 8, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Benjamin Kunkel
Jane Jacobs’s Radical Vision of Humanity Jane Jacobs’s Radical Vision of Humanity
For the great urbanist and social critic, the planning of cities was always an ad hoc affair.
Feb 3, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow
That It Might Save, or Drown Them That It Might Save, or Drown Them
I have seen how the earth erodes differently from the way that trust does. Likewise, I know what it means, to come to love all over again the very mistakes I also know, looking bac…
Feb 2, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Carl Phillips
Blue Wash on Linen Canvas, Believed Unfinished Blue Wash on Linen Canvas, Believed Unfinished
And he woke again like a thief undetected, invisible therefore, and therefore free. The bronze horse’s hoof stood raised for apparently ever about to trample beneath it the cross o…
Feb 2, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Carl Phillips
Adam Thirlwell on the Many Moods of Henry Green Adam Thirlwell on the Many Moods of Henry Green
For the English novelist, life itself was a deadly business.
Feb 2, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Adam Thirlwell
Who Will Fund Investigative Reporting in the Age of Trump? Who Will Fund Investigative Reporting in the Age of Trump?
Anya Schiffrin reviews a new book on the history and economics of investigative journalism.
Feb 1, 2017 / Books & the Arts / Anya Schiffrin