Summer of Hate Summer of Hate
Eric Garner’s death marks a darkening mood fifty years after Freedom Summer.
Aug 13, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Patricia J. Williams
The Burkean Regicide The Burkean Regicide
Does David Bromwich’s idea of a Burkean left amount to anything more than contempt for Obama?
Aug 12, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Samuel Moyn
Violent Femme Violent Femme
How Scarlett Johansson learned to become aloof from her own seductiveness.
Aug 12, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
Song of the Andoumboulou: 142 Song of the Andoumboulou: 142
—moment’s omen— We were on a train somewhere on our way to Cal- ifornia. Florida, Panama and the Bahamas lay behind. Abandoned boys and girls again, the band of us. We threw our votes toward the polling place, too far away to reach… Southern arrest had set in. We set our sights west. Sunset’s chemical sky some new recognizance, balm the omen’s notice might be… Lone Coast obliquity said come hither… Steeped insolvency, bittersweet obliquity, bend. Fit were it the end of it but not, Lone Coast arri- vancy. Lone Coast obliquity’s behest… We had just gotten started, we were barely off. A dream of outmost arrival obliged us, the asymptotic hustle it was notwithstanding, a blessing we were bent on, boon beyond any, Lone Coast rapprochement… Either we stood in a line wrapped around the world or we sat on a train headed west, IDs in see- thru ink… Either way we circumambulated, un- sure which, the ballot box our Ka’ba stone, black rock, no way to look thru or look into it, no matter it lay broken or because it lay broken, come from no sky we knew… We were scared and afraid fear meant we knew something, scared being scared was know- ing’s omen, moment’s gnosis. The Alone lay waiting, the we we were afraid we’d be • I knew there was no we. I knew I knew we less than we’s rumor. I knew it was a feeling from before… I knew there was the hum it made at least. I snuck a peek at where the Alone were, Lone Coast intaglio a grimace in the wind. The it of it might only be the hum of it I saw, heard what it made me imagine I saw, an aggrieved amen we were a moan away from… Why they take it away, why they try to we were asking. A lady dressed in black stood in the aisle and started dancing. Other- wise we sat with refugee blankets tossed over us, flags, we later learned, of the possessed… Why we the had we were asking, wanting more to think of an earlier life, some lifted sense, something said get- ting out of a car when we were nineteen… So it was and so it went… So we said and saw it come true… Dispossession got hold of us, possessed us, got us happy, Lone Coast abandon woven into the blankets we wore… Now it was a bus we were on, going backwards, no matter we sat in front. Where was the ballot box we were asking, where did they put it… We soon saw the way, the fey design of it, away from Lone Coast while on it, none of us know- ing where, none of us knowing when. We were in the aisle now, the lady in black our leader. Lone Coast islander, she intimated come hither, gave the air a bump with her hips and gave it a grind. Give it all a don’t- care damn we took her to mean ____________________ She was the moment’s woman, frustration’s main squeeze. Given to paradox, don’t-care damn we gave it up to, all of us only there not knowing why she made us admit… She took it from jook to flamenco before we could blink. Back stiff, head and chin high, heels hammers, face rationing pride and duress… Eyes elsewhere, her hands bore mu- dras, a sign from the east it seemed. Don’t-care damn a danced indifference, dance don’t-care’s ta- ’wil • Heels hit the floor, we’d had enough. The lady in black’s heels hit and ours followed. Heels hit the floor on the bus that had been a train, the bus that again was a train when our heels hit… A Websterian growl went up as they hit, cante jondo’s friend. A breathy reed squawk be- hind each of us, a kundalini blacksnake moan… A buttress it seemed it was in back of us. Gravel- ly strafe Camarón would’ve blown had he blown a horn… Thus it was we spoke of clowns and kings, each of us conducting our lone apocalypse. “Na- ture Boy,” before we knew it, was on the box that wasn’t there. Instead, we spoke with our feet… An early joy relived in a dream came next. Lone Coast reconnaissance. Dreamt-of entelechy. Hint- ed what arrival might be ____________________ (slogan) What it was was dance was a weapon for the weaponless, would-be some would’ve said. It wasn’t some “next level” stuff, we’d have none of it, a way of being away that brought out in was all it was, frown-line amenity a wrinkle in the wind, noses up as though we took offense… What it was was we did take offense, ballot-box ab- scondity afoot, no one would not have. Deep song dance’s hauteur was no shuffle. All heel was what it was, all stomp
Aug 12, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Nathaniel Mackey
Shelf Life Shelf Life
Trevor Winkfield is a connoisseur of the original, spare and strange.
Aug 12, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky
Who Is Jack O’Dell? Who Is Jack O’Dell?
The career of Hunter Pitts O’Dell is a crucial episode in the hidden history of American radicalism.
Aug 11, 2014 / Books & the Arts / D.D. Guttenplan
Forty Years Later, Our ‘Long National Nightmare’ Is Far From Over Forty Years Later, Our ‘Long National Nightmare’ Is Far From Over
Watergate itself is “smoking gun” proof of that old axiom about the corruption of power.
Aug 5, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Richard Kreitner
‘Gross Cruelty and Fraud’ in the Gulf of Tonkin: A Brief History ‘Gross Cruelty and Fraud’ in the Gulf of Tonkin: A Brief History
The quagmire of the Vietnam War was built on a “queasy foundation of fact and myth.”
Jul 31, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Richard Kreitner and Back Issues
Spina’s Shadow Spina’s Shadow
“Darling, this is Alessandro Spina, who is trying to make Italians feel guilty about their colonial crimes.”
Jul 29, 2014 / Books & the Arts / André Naffis-Sahely
The Corners The Corners
Where the question are you alright usually finds one very much not alright. Cellphone at the bus stop, cellophane, wind, Hasty Mart in its collar of pigeon spikes. With smokes in front of the sports bar, careerists mid-shift lit at dusk by the inner light of cheap bottles of domestic. Like payphones, cords have been cut that tied them to the world. Let me off here, the primary neighbourhood, I’ll walk the traffic’s bank, its decorative plantings and contradictory signage, the current, I can’t brave it. Fortunes approach right-angled in their vehicles of delivery, hearts beat quickly in anticipation or dread inspired by the landmarks. How long have I traveled here in these years of gentrification and not realized they’re gone—the inconvenient, inadequate, or taken for granted? The psychic welcomes no more walk-ins in this life. Time is short. Though a timeless sublegal entrepreneurial spirit flourishes over which laundromats preside geologically, with deep sighs, belying with the state of their drains their adjectives. No one can be alone like they can. Pedestrians, obey your signals. On the boulevard of a two-stage crossing he reads in her an imminent change in direction. We were here once, hand in hand at the intersection of the cardinal and ordinal, blessed with purpose, and the Star of Poland still in business.
Jul 29, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Karen Solie