Video: Scent of Geranium
. There’s no denying that we’re living in a defining cultural moment. A war of ideas is taking place on many fronts and fundamental principles once considered secure are being … Continue reading
Stephen Dobyns: Spider Web
There are stories that unwind themselves as simply as a ball of string. A man is on a plane between New York and Denver. He sees his life as moving … Continue reading
Rosaly DeMaios Roffman: A Measure
When there had to be a gift through rubble to tell the children not to continue on that killer path and there was a little kindness it was a little … Continue reading
Kristofer Collins: Burning
for Margaret Bashaar You are reciting poems as the Braddock Avenue trees litter pink buds all over, or perhaps you are dreaming. These million floating poems carry your full … Continue reading
David Ades: Fairy Tale
Once there was a room, a house. Once there was a family, all threaded lives, there were books and learning, photographs, happy memories. Once there was a path, a … Continue reading
Audio: Gwendolyn Brooks at the Library of Congress
From the Archive of Recorded Poetry at the Library of Congress The twenty-ninth person appointed Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gwendolyn Brooks reads selections … Continue reading
Kate Daniels — The Addict’s Mother: Birth Story
She wasn’t watching when they cut him Out. C-section, you know. Green drape Obscuring the mound of ripened belly They extracted him from. He spilled Out squalling, already starving. Still … Continue reading
Joan E. Bauer: Dramatic Monologue — Joseph Brodsky
We tap dance down the highway. There’s an exit. Who made me a pharoah? Dare I gesture — or reach for a cigarette? Shouldn’t I be on the banks … Continue reading
A.E. Housman: “Loveliest of trees, the cherry now”
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten, … Continue reading
Video: Michelle Thaller — “We Are Dead Stars”
. In this collaboration between The Atlantic and the podcast TRBQ (The Really Big Questions), NASA astronomer Michelle Thaller explains how every atom in the human body – and, indeed, … Continue reading
Doug Anderson: The Boat
Give me the humility of the physicist who knows how little we know of anything. Four percent is measurable and we don’t know the meaning of even that. All this … Continue reading
Michael T. Young: Reading for Pleasure
I sometimes — no, often — have to say things out loud to understand them because that voice in my head doesn’t sound like me, doesn’t know that words have … Continue reading
Robert Gibb: Home Scrap Project — Unemployed Steel Worker, 1987-1988
for Ramon Elouza . Close-ups in an eye-level lineup, His photographed faces hung on their wall, Each behind lines of writing, well I lost my job my wife and … Continue reading
Chana Bloch: The Messiah of Harvard Square
Every year some students would claim to be the Messiah, It was the rabbi who had to deal with them. He had jumped, years ago, from a moving boxcar on … Continue reading
