Ted Olson: Bob Dylan and the creative leap that transformed modern music
Sixty years ago, on Halloween Night 1964, a 23-year-old Dylan took the stage at New York City’s Philharmonic Hall. He had become a star within the niche genre of revivalist folk music. But by 1964 Dylan was building a much larger fanbase through performing and recording his own songs.
Baron Wormser: Striving with a God
In his best poems, something elemental is occurring – the clash between a lone life and the accrued verity of socialized watchfulness, the adages that are spoken without a second thought.
Mike Vargo: Magical Realism — in Literature, in Life, and Online
My daughter called herself Dark White Wolf, and when I was a child, I had an imaginary companion — a second self — whom I brought to the dinner table with me. Nobody was allowed to sit in my doppelgänger’s chair.
Michael Simms: Jubilate
Now I shall praise our dog Josie
the bodhisattva of our household
the perfect embodiment
of devotion, always present
in spontaneous awe
Baron Wormser: The Loss of Literature
Literature challenges the very idea of right thinking, which is one reason tyrants have suppressed literature, though that suppression is ably carried out by any zealous group of chiding, censorious know-it-alls.
Baron Wormser: The Refusal
We take, rightly so, poets and writers as people who, in some way, shape, or form, are involved in praising the sheer energy of Being and, in that regard, are saying yes to the life force.
Rachel Hadas: ‘Each bears his own ghosts’
How the classics speak to these days of fear, anger and presidential candidates stalking the land
Steven Rosenfeld: Leading Civil Rights Lawyer Shows 20 Ways Trump Is Copying Hitler’s Early Rhetoric and Policies
Watching Trump work his crowds, I see a dangerously manipulative narcissist unleashing the demagogic spells that he learned from studying Hitler’s speeches–spells that he cannot control and that are capable of eroding the fabric of American democracy
Baron Wormser: “Gilgamesh Hector Roland” | On Zbigniew Herbert
If only we had the strength to acknowledge our weaknesses, how different we might be as creatures.
Mike Vargo: The Insanity of Our Times, According to Philip Slater
Nothing explains everything, but some things explain a lot.
Paige Curtis: What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
What if we had systems that loved us and, by extension, the planet?”
Paul Christensen: Interpreting YouTube
YouTube is full of mini-documentaries on how other animals express love for one another, and remember the kindness paid to them by human beings after years of living in the wild.
Baron Wormser: The Harrowing of Hart Crane (Among Others)
The fate of eloquence in modern times is played out in Crane’s poetry, not in some ultimate fashion but, rather, as a perpetual vision-quest one man puts himself through, a quest in which poetry is, at once, the means and the end.
Barbara Hamby: 17 Dollars
That’s how much the man who owned DuBey’s gave me
for my books that time you insisted
they were taking up space and we needed the money.
