Edna St. Vincent Millay: I, Being born a Woman and Distressed (Sonnet XLI)
I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind, Am urged by your propinquity to find Your person fair, and feel a … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: Back in Provence
I’m back in France after nine months in rural Vermont. I had grown indifferent to the cold in Vermont, the gray skies hanging down like some Sheik’s desert tent. I … Continue reading
Arlene Weiner: In Dreams I Ride a Bus
Because a bus is a house of many windows Because it carries light through dark streets and shade through hot streets Because it is safety between the sadness of … Continue reading
James Baldwin: The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity
I really don’t like words like “artist” or “integrity” or “courage” or “nobility.” I have a kind of distrust of all those words because I don’t really know what they … Continue reading
Video: “Aubade” read by Philip Larkin
Aubade I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: Street Photography
Wonder how long it took people to get over the shock of the first photographs, the exact replication of the human image? Was it eerie? Did people feel that something … Continue reading
Video: Farrah Fawcett on Stiletto Power
In this animation of a 1994 interview, Farrah Fawcett tells a great story about how she dealt with an attempted robbery in New York City: “I’ve got stiletto heels … Continue reading
Noam Chomsky: The Costs of Violence
Masters of Mankind (Part 2) [This piece, the second of two parts, is excerpted from Noam Chomsky’s new book, Who Rules the World? (Metropolitan Books). Part 1 can be found … Continue reading
John Samuel Tieman: After Reading Sappho
. [For you] the fragrant-blossomed Muses’ lovely gifts [be zealous] girls, [and the] clear melodious lyre. [but my once tender] body old age now [has seized] my hair’s turned [white] … Continue reading
Jenne’ R. Andrews: The Mortal Ardor of Bees
After 25 years, the land around their house was littered with graves. Cats, dogs, stillborn puppies, fading kittens whose nostrils she had covered at the last. .. The great show … Continue reading
Richard Eskow: What’s Killing the American Middle Class?
A new study by the Pew Research Center spurred a rash of headlines about “the dying middle class.” But the word “dying” might be more appropriate if we were watching … Continue reading
Charles Ornstein: As Opioid Epidemic Continues, Steps to Curb It Multiply
The overdose death toll from opioids, both prescription drugs and heroin, has almost quadrupled since 1999. In 2014 alone, 28,000 people died of opioid overdoses, more than half from prescription … Continue reading
Reyna d’Assia: The Key to Immortal Consciousness
We have been badly educated. We live in a world of competition in which honesty is synonymous with naïveté. We must first develop good habits. Some of them may seem … Continue reading
Philip Terman: Holocaust Memorial Lecture, 2016
When the Syrian human rights worker Spoke of his prison experience, A girl sitting beside me Was consulting her cell phone, when He began his story about … Continue reading
