Language Arts Archives

Civilian Objects Civilian Objects

Architecture lets us speak of the spoken indirectly.

Oct 28, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Michael Sorkin

Algeria Algeria

You eat a songbird From beginning to end. You pierce your gums With tiny ribs For a squirt of her liquor Down your throat. Mitterrand hid his pleasure & his shame Under a clean white napkin as His own blood mixed with his last meal. We are kept in the dark To be tender & fat. The ortolan bunting sings A beautiful song & Stains our teeth from behind.

Oct 28, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Sylvie Baumgartel

Short Pop Short Pop

Film and TV are plagued by duration creep. Just like work—or unemployment.

Oct 28, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Joshua Clover

‘With This Madness, What Art Could There Be?’ ‘With This Madness, What Art Could There Be?’

An Armenian-American writer asks if the Armenian obsession with genocide recognition is worth its emotional and psychological price.

Oct 21, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Meline Toumani

Pictures of Icarus Pictures of Icarus

With his cutouts, Henri Matisse tried to free himself from gravity.

Oct 21, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky

What Are Movies Good For? What Are Movies Good For?

Awakening a sense of wonder and flooding a cinema with crucial realities.

Oct 21, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans

The Summer Leaves The Summer Leaves

nothing unscathed. Desires, once tender stalks, grow brittle; the first and clear-eyed dew that clung thereto expires. The summer leaves—the trees’ dense growth—that, dying little by little, turn red, brown, go down and down and these still leaves long winds will shake and put me on my mettle— here, rusted as dead blood, there, bright, my good— both make the most of light. And then, as, torn, the leaves resettle, and the heart, ravaged, grieves, the summer leaves again.

Oct 21, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Catherine Breese Davis