Djelloul Marbrook: Annotating Books and Other Heresies
I grew up in an austere Protestant ethos in which the annotation of a book was desecration, as sinful as a Catholic mass. We were to cherish books and pass … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: Our Discourse About Racism is too Narrow
I’ve felt from a very early age that we can’t engage in honest discourse about racism in our society unless we take the full measure of racism as it has … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: Three poems
Handling plutonium So this business of being you is about handling plutonium and is much more dangerous than your parents said. You stumbled across yourself so often you became your … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: Poetry as Lightning
Poetry is by its very nature subversive. Poetry is the lightning of a society. In its flashes the demons of a society glow. The copper-wired job of the critical establishment … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: The Bridge
A small creek feeds our pond, as well as underground springs, and a bridge spans the creek from the rear of our barn to a bog. Over time the bridge … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: How the Press Masks its Xenophobia
The press dolls up its xenophobia in pseudo-objective claptrap, but when you explore its use of Arabic words like jihad and caliph and mullah a persistent pattern of demonization emerges. … Continue reading
Rediscovering a Lost 20th Century Artist: Juanita Guccione
Nearly 80 years ago, the Brooklyn Museum displayed the works of several up-and-coming artists. Among the not-yet-household names featured were Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, who would go on to … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: Why Do We Limit Journalism To 19th Century Conventions?
As developments tumble over on each other, it’s difficult to achieve and hold perspective. But it is my hope that in the 21st Century a journalism will evolve that makes … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: The Body Language of Poetry
Don’t gesticulate with your hands or make faces when speaking, the teachers at my British boarding school told me. It’s vulgar. I’m sure that this enjoinder at such an impressionable … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: Don’t Believe the Libel that Poets Don’t Engage in Politics
Watching, we won’t see leaves break through the smooth finality of surface. This strophe from Rusty Morrison’s poem, “History of Seed,”* explains to a wondrous extent the way we are beguiled … Continue reading
Let’s Hear It for Ball-Busting Poetry About a World Men Have Ruined!
Let’s have dangerous, trouble-making, side-sinister, cantankerous, mean poetry. Let`s have pure-damn evil poetry. Looking out my kitchen window, having watched a red-tailed hawk stoop and carry off a baby rabbit, … Continue reading
Djelloul Marbrook: Auda Abu Tayi, Lord of the Howeitat
Arab consonants sail right to left bearing cargoes of vowels. The British artist and sculptor Eric Kennington may have had this in mind when he made this magnificent—left-facing— pastel portrait … Continue reading →