Dorothy Wordsworth Dorothy Wordsworth
Dorothy Wordsworth The daffodils can go fuck themselves. I'm tired of their crowds, yellow rantings about the spastic sun that shines and shines and shines. How are they any different from me? I, too, have a big messy head on a fragile stalk. I spin with the wind. I flower and don't apologize. There's nothing funny about good weather. Oh, spring again, the critics nod. They know the old joy, that wakeful quotidian, the dark plot of future growing things, each one labeled Narcissus nobilis or Jennifer Chang. If I died falling from a helicopter, then this would be an important poem. Then the ex-boyfriends would swim to shore declaiming their knowledge of my bulbous youth. O, Flower, one said, why aren't you meat? But I won't be another bashful shank. The tulips have their nervous joie-de-vivre, the lilacs their taunt. Fractious petals, stop interrupting my poem with boring beauty. All the boys are in the field gnawing raw bones of ambition and calling it ardor. Who the hell are they? This is a poem about war.
Jan 19, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Jennifer Chang
Perfect-Bound: On Elizabeth Hardwick Perfect-Bound: On Elizabeth Hardwick
Elizabeth Hardwick found New York's jittery impermanence and inchoate density to be an obstacle for the fiction writer.
Jan 19, 2011 / Books & the Arts / James Marcus
An Atlas of Reckonings An Atlas of Reckonings
The horrors of The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database arise through the cumulative weight of its abstract pieces of information.
Jan 19, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Robin Einhorn
Rebel Journalist John Ross, the Master of Speaking Truth to Power, Is Dead Rebel Journalist John Ross, the Master of Speaking Truth to Power, Is Dead
American Book Award–winner, chronicler of indigenous struggles and proud radical, Ross wrote his own epitaph: "Life, like reporting, is a kind of death sentence. Pa...
Jan 18, 2011 / Books & the Arts / John Nichols
House Republicans Plan Symbolic Repeal Vote on the Healthcare Law House Republicans Plan Symbolic Repeal Vote on the Healthcare Law
"We'll show the poor."
Jan 13, 2011 / Column / Calvin Trillin
Empty Rooms: On Nicole Krauss Empty Rooms: On Nicole Krauss
Nicole Krauss's Great House swings from the evocative to the overcharged.
Jan 12, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Alexandra Schwartz
Literature and Exile Literature and Exile
Books are the only homeland of the true writer, books that may sit on shelves or in the memory.
Jan 12, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Roberto Bolaño
Vanishing Points: Language Poetry Remembered Vanishing Points: Language Poetry Remembered
The Grand Piano is a highbrow Friends—a collective history of the early years of Language poetry.
Jan 12, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky
Little Pick Eye Little Pick Eye
Little Pick Eye turned William over like the boots his mama left in the hall. Stupid pickle gulls pulled the hair out of his head. Call him kid flower and I guess over time stiffened and plucked is how you might describe him. The main thing to remember is that it's not your fault. You didn't introduce him to the cigar. You didn't give him a hottie tottie when he got froze outa school and you aint gonna straighten him out with a crowbar now. Dogs dancing with their big old teeth, bars a shakin, neighbors scramin neighbors. You pay good money to live somewhere and then wammo, God makes it snow all over your car. Odds are bad you called for advice but advice is what you're gonna get: Work to be the bastard Live to be the bastard And then be the bastard That, or they'll take your money right out of the bank in front of your eyes and tell ya about it. Now Git. Now Git! Now Git! You didn't make it, we just gave it to you for something you did.
Jan 12, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Beckman
This Week at TheNation.com: Hope in 2011. Plus: A New Nation Fellow This Week at TheNation.com: Hope in 2011. Plus: A New Nation Fellow
Hope in 2011. Plus: The Nation Institute welcomes a new fellow.
Jan 7, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Katrina vanden Heuvel