Ghosting History Ghosting History
Heidi Durrow traces a young girl's harrowing plunge into racial identity.
Jun 30, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Madison Smartt Bell
Alongside Darwin Alongside Darwin
The sun is a forerunner of itself. Picture a black road very early, Desert mountains to the east, No trees. As the sun rises, Blacking then blazoning The dry slopes, it also Walks the road to you. Truth like a canopy shelters truth, Illusions of combat among the greenflies. There is no sky. There is only the sun And the sun’s sharp progress Through the God-forsaken, which is sunlight too. I hear voices underneath the road. Whichever way I go was once an ocean.
Jun 30, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Donald Revell
Barry Eisler vs. Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn and Brad Thor Barry Eisler vs. Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn and Brad Thor
A former covert CIA operative turned novelist is fast emerging as one of the most important fiction writers in the military/covert ops/political thriller genre dominated by right-w...
Jun 29, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Jeremy Scahill
Economic Anxiety and the Gay Marriage Debate Economic Anxiety and the Gay Marriage Debate
Proposition 8, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and Civil Unions? Nation Senior Editor Richard Kim and writer Reihan Salam talk it all out on Bloggingheads.tv.
Jun 24, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Bloggingheads
As Big as Mount Ararat As Big as Mount Ararat
Orhan Pamuk may be the face that Turkish literature turns to the West, but the novelist Yashar Kemal is its conscience and heart.
Jun 24, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Marc Edward Hoffman
Fragments Fragments
When dawn, wearing golden sandals, awoke me, I began to crawl, burning, shivering, to my uncurtained window; Migrating birds streamed over the dark sea. Who can quench the ingenious fires of cruelty? I was dreaming of white-fetlocked horses conferring in a meadow When dawn, wearing golden sandals, awoke me. On my stopped loom, a sort of landscape: icy Peaks, serrated as daggers; a corpse, and beside it a crow, And migrating birds streaming over the dark sea. Fat, autumnal flies alight on my sheets, rainbow-hued, dizzy; This one on my wrist--its mandibles quiver, its gibbous eyes glow... Then dawn, wearing golden sandals, awoke me. Merciless daughter of Zeus, immortal Aphrodite, Come to me, sing to me, low-voiced, in sorrow Of migrating birds that stream over the dark sea. Cast aside your spangled headband: in my mirror I see You beneath these stringy locks, puckered lips, and tearstained cheeks... go, Migrating birds, stream over the dark sea; And dawn, wearing golden sandals, awake me.
Jun 24, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Mark Ford
Bierced Bierced
Ours is an age of the unexpected, the extraordinary—the uncanny. What better time to resurrect the stories of Ambrose Bierce?
Jun 24, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Victor LaValle
Cornered Cornered
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's 12th & Delaware; Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger's Restrepo; Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me; Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are Al...
Jun 23, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
The Everyday Oblique The Everyday Oblique
How and why do we use things like codes, jokes and slang to mask our meanings?
Jun 22, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Ange Mlinko
Ardor and the Abyss Ardor and the Abyss
Emily Dickinson's reclusiveness was a way of protecting the world from herself.
Jun 16, 2010 / Books & the Arts / James Longenbach