Emily Cataneo: A New Chapter in the Quest for a Longer Life
In “Why We Die,” biologist and Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan explores the science of aging and life extension.
Elizabeth Gargano: How Parables Teach Us Who We Are
Octavia Butler’s novel begins in what then seemed a distant future, our current year of 2024. Lauren Olamina, the novel’s protagonist, leads a ragged band of followers through an America that is coming apart at the seams.
John Zheng | Valediction: Poems and Prose by Linda Parsons
Parsons’s contemplation moves from shaping garden beds to shaping life. Garden is an island of necessity where her “orbits in and out of the perennial beds” have shaped her life for thirty years.
Dion O’Reilly: Luke Johnson’s Heroic Journey
Luke Johnson’s debut poetry collection portrays a dream world linked to a stark reality, where generational trauma is recognized as an artifact of mind, a collection of leaping memories that haunt and possess.
Baron Wormser: Vistas
I don’t doubt that somewhere in the United States some class or reading group, as a way of girding their collective loins for the upcoming election, is reading or rereading Democratic Vistas, an 1871 essay in which Walt Whitman surveyed American democracy’s prospects.
Mike Vargo: Is There a Real Me?
Believing in a real self would be easier if the self were not so inconsistent.
Michael Simms: Writing Prompts #9 and #10 | Find Your Inner Dragon
In this session, we’ll experiment with employing familiar tropes in new ways.
Baron Wormser: Disunited Delusions
Donald Trump, as an unrestrained American ego, seems like an allegorical figure of the sort that Melville had a fondness for—the Confidence Man, par excellence.
Floyd Collins: The Eternal Pearl
David Rigsbee’s version of Dante’s Paradiso captures memorably the dulce stil nuovo (“sweet new style”) adopted by thirteenth century Italian poets from the troubadours of Provence.
GEORGE YANCY: How Can Philosophy Speak to a World in Crisis? The Answer May Lie in Our Bodies
Whether we are ill, depressed, anxious, suffering from injustice, a refugee, incarcerated — having contact with beauty can lift our spirits, rehumanizing us.
Vox Populi: Most Popular Posts of 2023
We now have approximately 18,000 email subscribers, one third outside the United States, and our posts are picked up by social media where they often go viral. For example, Zeina Azzam’s poem Write My Name, published in November 2023, has been translated into Arabic, Spanish, French, and Japanese, as well as other languages, and read by millions.
Michael Simms: Writing Prompt # 8 – Start a file of your favorite short passages
Whenever I need inspiration, I go back to a collection of my favorite poems and prose passages that I keep in an electronic file on my desktop. They consistently remind me why I love writing and reading.
Traditional Poems from Pre-Modern South India
It was the very first night,
and the young girl showed surprising skill
in the arts of love
Stuart Sheppard: Rebellious Spirits
Some historical events seem so fantastical that they sound like myths when retold, while others are so intrinsic to our nature that they could be today’s news, and actually help us understand our contemporaneous existence more deeply.
Vox Populi 