Clean Sweep
* Lillian Li *
August 7th was moving day, a day I had anticipated with equal parts dread and excitement since the dead-end of January.
Arts & Culture
The Case for Locally Sourced Books
* Kevin Haworth *
What if we assigned books the way that many of us buy our food—from the local outward. What would a locally-sourced book list look like?
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Literacy for Poets
* Leah Falk *
In the fiftieth anniversary year of Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media, considering the alphabet as both technology and aesthetic object.
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Intimacy, and Maureen McLane’s My Poets
* Paula Mendoza *
I’m fascinated by the phenomenon of literary intimacy—the relationship between a reader and the literature they love—and in particular, the intimacy between a poetry reader, and the poets they admire.
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On Transformative Compassion
* Kaveh Bassiri *
The recent trying political events in the Middle East are so dark and troubling that I lost the elation of Arab Spring and went in search of moral and ethical grounds — a vista where I can look at what is happening from a clear vantage point.
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Fearsome Beauty, the Art of Lauren Boilini
* Robert Sparrow Jones *
“I thought I was touching God the first time I tackled someone in a rugby practice. When I played rugby I loved being crushed into a scrum, pushed into the inside of a maul, piled into a ruck. I loved being a part of bodies on top of bodies, on top of bodies, and I think that has reflected in my work over the years. Open water swimming is all about vast, open space that surrounds you, and over time that has become a necessary contrast to the compression of space that I usually look for.” –Lauren Boilini
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Midnight Reads
* Mary Camille Beckman *
How do I soothe myself when I react, as if allergic, to my own need for sleep? Just calm down, I plead. My insomnia strides forward, unchecked.
Bob Hicok’s “Duh”
* Claire Skinner *
I’m lying on the bed reading Bob Hicok. Have you read him? He’s a loquacious, lively poet who takes me by the hand and says, “Let’s talk about French kissing and grammar and death in the span of a couple dozen lines, okay?”
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La Grande Percée: Modern Urbanism in Strasbourg, Pt. 1
* Jeremy Allan Hawkins *
At the turn of the twentieth century, the increasingly poor living conditions in central Strasbourg were the subject of study by municipal housing associations. Inspectors discovered buildings in advanced stages of dilapidation, often with large groups of people living in small single rooms with chronic humidity problems. Many residents lived in housing with no windows or direct light of any kind. Outside, the streets were narrow and dirty, spotted with dung heaps and all kinds of garbage. At the time, journalists and surveyors were openly referring to the old city center as resembling a cesspit or an open sewer. The city leaders decided a radical action would need to be taken to address the problem.
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On Escapism
Detective stories appeal to the dream of resolution in which lurks the dreams of justice and salvation.