Articles

Showing 1-20 of 707 articles
  • Essay

    The Crown Prince of Bad Judgment

    By Sandra Simonds
    In March 1948, Look magazine sent 19-year-old Stanley Kubrick to Kane County, Illinois, to document Mooseheart, an orphanage 40 miles west of Chicago. Kubrick was sent because he was young and wouldn’t cause...
    A black-and-white photograph of the poet Bill Knott reading a book in a messy room piled with books, newspapers, and furniture.
  • Essay

    The Stoker

    By Matthew Spencer
    A poet appears at the family doorstep. He has been gone for years, living in another country where he can write according to his own principles rather than those dictated by the state. His career...
    A black-and-white photograph of Wolfgang Hilbig in a dark coat and gloves, a satchel over his shoulder. Behind him is a desolate country landscape.
  • Essay

    Attached and Riveted

    By Megan Milks
    In his new book Dances of Time and Tenderness (Nightboat, 2024), the movement artist and historian Julian Carter repeatedly defines the project by what it is not. “This is not a book, it’s a series of swoons...
    A black-and-white collage of hands affixing chains to a large human heart.
  • Essay

    Look At Me, and I Will Look At You

    By J. Howard Rosier
    Heavy and constricting is the specter of death. Though its monuments in literature are often haunted by a procession of literal ghosts, these presences also materialize in protagonists’ memories....
    A glowing white figure in a dark landscape looms over a woman who is stretching toward it.
  • Essay

    He Became a Fabulous Opera

    By R.K. Hegelman
    As for the poète maudit, the French writer Barbey d’Aurevilly put it best: “There remains no choice for him but that between the muzzle of a pistol or the foot of the cross.” Redemption or extinction...
    A black-and-white photograph of Delmore Schwartz looking at the camera.
  • Essay

    Like the Thinking of Trees

    By Ilya Kaminsky
    AbsurdistThe poet Tomaž Šalamun did not like to speak about his five days in a Yugoslav prison.When he was 23, Šalamun wrote a poem calling his countrymen “ideologues with whorish ideologies,” “trained...
    A photograph of Tomaž Šalamun looking into the camera, his hands folded.
  • Essay

    Not Senseless, Not Angels

    By Joy Lanzendorfer
    One day last year, while perusing a newspaper from 1914 for a writing project, I came upon a piece titled “Why We Oppose Pockets for Women.” It was printed near the bottom of the page, with no accompanying...
    A black-and-white photograph in side profile of Alice Duer Miller, dressed in a fur coat and a feathered black hat.
  • Essay

    More Even Than Itself

    By Daisy Fried
    On RestlessnessI was doing yoga, restless, as always, in final relaxation pose, when a thought came to me: C. K. Williams’s poems never relax, even in their stillest moments—and that’s one reason I like them...
    A black-and-white photograph of C.K. Williams looking into the camera.
  • Essay

    Eternity Only Will Answer

    By Maya C. Popa
    Forget the Emily Dickinson you think you know, that hermetic author of bedeviling sense, “So Anthracite, to live - // For some - an Ampler Zero -.” Say goodbye to the Belle and Recluse of Amherst...
    An illustration of Emily Dickinson sitting at a desk outside, her back to us, as she writes letters. In the foreground are dandelions and hydrangeas.
  • Essay

    Sweatshop of the Eye

    By Anthony Reed
    In her celebrated book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020), Isabel Wilkerson argues that race is to caste as skin is to bones. This isn’t an entirely new idea. As early as Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Frantz...
    A painting of Black figures arranged on a chessboard that is covered with various objects, including a pink globe. A rural landscape stretches behind them, leading to a hill from which rays of light beam.
  • Essay

    Out of Your Head and Into Your Body

    By Rebecca Kosick
    John Sinclair learned about jazz and pot by reading books. A poet, activist, leftist publisher, journalist, and onetime manager of the Detroit protopunk band MC5, Sinclair grew up in a small town...
    A portrait of John Sinclair making a peace sign while smoking a joint. He wears a yellow shirt with a marijuana leaf on it.
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