Jonathan Kaplan: Why is a love poem full of sex in the Bible? Readers have been struggling with the Song of Songs for 2,000 years
Feminist readings have highlighted the female character’s power, autonomy and sensuality. Conservative Christians, meanwhile, often approach the poem as an ideal expression of acceptable love between a husband and wife.
Baron Wormser: Poetry and Paradise
One of the defining aspects of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, is poetry. The novel, devoted to the boyhood, young manhood, and then manhood proper (which is to say—war, disillusionment, and lost love) of Amory Blaine, traces the evolution of Amory’s sensibility.
Michael Simms: Daisy
After you died, I pulled a copy of Gatsby
From your shelf — torn, underlined, smudged
With marginalia — but still beautiful
In an unbound unglued sort of way.
Rebekah Entralgo: Biden Is Right. No Billionaire Should Pay a Lower Tax Rate Than a School Teacher
Under the billionaire minimum income tax, billionaires would pay a tax rate of at least 20 percent on their full income, including unrealized appreciation, just like workers pay taxes on their paychecks each year.
Robert Frost: The Fear
A lantern light from deeper in the barn
Shone on a man and woman in the door
And threw their lurching shadows on a house
Near by, all dark in every glossy window.
Rebecca Gordon: Rain and Heat, Fire and Snow
Life in a Destabilized California
Jason Irwin: On the Road to Bushmills
Because of a parade, the road to Bushmills is closed.
It’s the only road that leads to Portrush, a town
less than nine miles away, where we’ve been told
there’s a laundromat.
Mike Vargo: Lies from Pre-History to Post-Santos
George Santos lied profusely. Elizabeth Holmes lied scientifically. Vladimir Putin has at his command an organized system for propagating lies and deceit, and he’s not alone.
Joan E. Bauer: Great Art is for Everyone
Papp was a communist, raven-haired, charismatic,
His mission: free Shakespeare for the people.
He borrwed lights & props, scrounged for costumes.
Even his wife didn’t know Yussef Papirovsky
began as a tough street kid in Brooklyn.
Sonali Kolhatkar: Taking A Hard Look At Police Killings
Police killed more people last year than any other on record. Can reimagining city budgets make our communities safer?
Jose Padua: This Curved Road Toward Space
The last time I was charmed
simply by someone’s good looks
it was something like 1963.
Clarence Lusane: The Votes That Weren’t Cast
The history of the suppression of Black voters is a first-rate horror story that as yet shows no sign of ending.
Barbara Crooker: Nearing Menopause, I Run Into Elvis At Shoprite,
The bass
line thumps and grinds, the honky tonk piano moves like an ivory
river, full of swampy delta blues.
Kim Ports Parsons: May the Particles of My Body Travel the Endless Conduits
When I die, lay me in the loam under the big oak
on the path through the woods, deep down in the endless
flow of talk among the trees there…
