Stephen Dobyns: Fly
They can hide. What’s the point of hiding?
They can run. Why bother running?
They feel defeated by the world’s terrors.
W. D. Ehrhart: Paul Fussell — A Remembrance
While Fussell wrote on a wide variety of subjects over his long life—ranging from Augustan humanism, Samuel Johnson, and Kingsley Amis to the 2nd Amendment, the Indianapolis 500, and travel in between-the-wars Europe—war, the irony of war, the suffering and lunacy and permanent damage of war, the unfairness of war, lay at the heart of his writing and of his being.
Barrett Swanson: The Soldier and the Soil
Their prose often stood head and shoulders above the standard freshman drivel, exhibiting a certain rigor of thought and depth of feeling that perhaps comes from having witnessed whole anthologies of trauma—entire villages razed by fire, wide-eyed children draped in gore, wives screaming beside mutilated husbands.
Video: Wavy Gravy & Ace of Cups | “Basic Human Needs”
And wouldn’t it be neat if the people that you meet had shoes upon their feet
And something to eat
And wouldn’t it be fine, now if all of human kind had shelter
Ellery Akers: Smoke
And so rubble, shrapnel,
a girl in a torn skirt
face down in a ditch.
Siegfried Sassoon: Grandeur of Ghosts
How can they use such names and be not humble?
I have sat silent; angry at what they uttered.
Juan Cole: Fundamentalist Pandemics
What Evangelicals Could Learn From The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam
John Feffer: The Black Death Killed Feudalism. What Does COVID-19 Mean for Capitalism?
How will the coronavirus transform the relationship between state and market? A look at oil, food, and finance.
W.D. Ehrhart: The Farmer
A farmer of dreams
knows how to pretend. A farmer of dreams
knows what it means to be patient.
Pema Chödrön: A Story about Fear
The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons.
George T. Conway, III et al: We’ve never backed a Democrat for president. But Trump must be defeated.
We are in extraordinary times, and we have chosen to put country over party — and former vice president Joe Biden is the candidate who we believe will do the same.
Video: Franny Choi recites “Split Mouth”
My mother’s tongue is a snipped string, a stripped stinger…
Steve Sweeney: Vietnam ships 450,000 protective suits for U.S. health care workers
A statement from the U.S. embassy in Hanoi confirmed that the first batch of supplies arrived in the U.S.’s national strategic stockpile on April 8.
Karen J. Greenberg: While Rome Burns, Trump Gets What He’s Always Wanted
In unsettling ways, the crisis is working for him as previously untenable policy options are becoming essential to curtailing the coronavirus.
