A premise: within every human being there is the vatic voice. Vates was the Greek word for the inspired bard, speaking the words of a god. To most people, this voice speaks only in a dream, and only in unremembered dream.
“The Vatic Voice: Waiting and Listening,” by Donald Hall Read More »
I hoped to discover by means of an extended research project just how close the similarities might be, and where the differences lay. Such an endeavor could bring us nearer to an answer to the question, “What makes man human?”
“In Search of Man: Experiments in Primate Communication,” by Francine Patterson Read More »
A long time ago, my Persian mother became a prophet, like Tiresias, and she told me I would die. But what does she know? She was cursed for interrupting love, for not allowing it.
“She Made My Eyes,” by Nahal Suzanne Jamir Read More »
At President Marion Leroy Burton’s invitation, Robert Frost arrived in the fall of 1921 to serve a one-year stint as the first Creative Fellow at Michigan. The two men were kindred spirits: Both forty-six, each had already achieved much, but had much higher ambitions—Burton to build Michigan into a great national university, Frost to become America’s greatest poet if not also a national institution. And each believed the other would help realize these ambitions.
“Frost and Burton at Michigan, 1921-26, Then and Now,” by Paul R. Dimond Read More »
The facts I gradually discovered about the human survivors who feed us all have an element of surprise, tinged with wariness about the future. What might once have seemed alien in their way of being came to seem special, all too rare, precious, endangered.
“The One Who Feeds Us All,” by Margaret Morganroth Gullette Read More »
Ulysses S. Grant said it well in his personal memoirs: “I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”
“Antebellum,” by Corey Van Landingham Read More »
The poet is that kid who, standing in the corner with his back turned to his schoolmates, thinks he is in paradise.
“The Trouble with Poetry,” by Charles Simic Read More »
All day long Polina sat anxiously waiting in her neighbors’ apartment, with its cracked windowpanes and boiling sausages, filled wall to wall with beds, piles of clothing, and damp water buckets sweating into towels.
“Surrounded,” by Zhanna Slor Read More »
He sank down and back then, buttoning a shirt he had thrust on, arranging objects from his pockets on the windowsill beside him, and began to eat a roll, after offering me one. Later when he went away to get some British illustrated papers about the removal of Yeats’s body to Ireland to show me, he brought back bananas, was very surprised when I didn’t want one, and rapidly ate both.
“A Visit to Ezra Pound in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, 1948,” by John Berryman Read More »
Before I tell you about the strange night I danced to “Hava Nagila” in a bar in Berlin, I have to admit that I think about this night often, and I think about it on two different occasions.
“Hava Nagila,” by Naira Kuzmich Read More »
