A Configuration of Themes A Configuration of Themes
This essay--Edward W. Said's first piece for The Nation from the magazine's May 30, 1966, issue--is a special selection from The Nation Digital Archive. If you want to read everyth...
Oct 30, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Edward W. Said
Two Poems by Marianne Moore Two Poems by Marianne Moore
Eight of Marianne Moore's major poems were published in The Nation in the 1940s and '50s, including "The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing," "In Distrust of Merits" and "A Carriage F...
Oct 9, 2003 / Books & the Arts / The Nation
What Are They Reading? What Are They Reading?
I'd like to say that I came across the poet Agha Shahid Ali of my own accord, browsing through the shelves of a bookshop or library and taking immediately to his finely structure...
Sep 8, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Priyanka Motaparthy
The Blue Laws The Blue Laws
My mother, a brunette, hurried in her cloth coat through postwar Sundays, which fell
Sep 4, 2003 / Books & the Arts / William Logan
Walt Whitman Walt Whitman
In 1848, 29-year-old Walt Whitman was for three months a reporter for the Daily Crescent in New Orleans, writing fluff pieces about local color and charm as seen through Yankee...
Jul 2, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Richard Gambino
Immortality Immortality
There are killer weeds, deep in the flower patch, down at the bottom of the tombstone. Only they'll seem to breed out of the ground itself.
Jun 26, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Robert Mazzocco
Passport: A Manifesto Passport: A Manifesto
This is your passport I hold in my hand: a hemisphere, half red ink, half blue-- as yet untorched by terror, but polluted
Jun 12, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Carol Muske-Dukes
When Poetry Was the Rage When Poetry Was the Rage
"That was a benefit shooting." So said a shaken Kenneth Koch to a stunned audience seconds after a tall, scraggly man fired a pistol at him on January 10, 1968.
May 29, 2003 / Books & the Arts / John Palattella
She’s So Heavy She’s So Heavy
In 1981 Carolyn Forché published a slim collection of verse, her second, titled The Country Between Us.
May 22, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Meghan O’Rourke
Dead Poets Society Dead Poets Society
It is agonizingly difficult to write about one's hometown as it drowns in flames and suffocates with smoke.
May 8, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Sinan Antoon