As I get older I find myself growing on the one hand much more flexible, more resilient, more inclined to take risks, and yet at the same time I can feel my interests and affections calcifying. My taste is turning pathological.
Another Summer (Make that Fall) Reading List Read More »
by Gina Balibrera
“In the sweep of its two wings, the huge mass of the castle mingled with the crests of the supporting rock; it lost itself, farther down, in the rugged surface of a cliff which dominated a broad stretch of ruins like the path of an avalanche; houses and terraces, here, could be seen clinging to the side of a hill whose base was already bathed in shadow. The whole pile of giant stones seemed unbelievable, looming in the sunset light against the horizon blocked by the clear blue lines of the Lubéron. This was Oppède.”
A Dozen Books for the Summer (Make that Fall) Months Read More »
As the season moves toward a time when it’s cozy to cuddle up with a good book without the burden of a wandering eye begging you to head outside for summer fun, we hope you’ll make time for reading for fun. Our suggestions follow, and we hope that you’ll share your own summer/fall reading list with us (whether it’s actual or aspirational).
A Summer (or Fall) Reading List from Us to You Read More »
The assemblage of the following thirteen texts, poems, and videos was inspired by Paul Gauguin’s painting in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts entitled “D’ou Venons Nous/Que Sommes Nous/Ou Allons Nous” (“Where Do We Come From/ What Are We/ Where Are We Going?”), and also by Brigitte Schuster’s photo-documentary project objet d’ailleurs.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at Genealogy, Ancestry, and the (Re)making of Selves Read More »
Just the other day I received a letter in the mail from my friend James who, at the time, was completing a writing fellowship in Moveen, Ireland–a remote town that from what I’ve been told boasts scenic green pastures, writerly solitude (with the exception of an occasional peeping-tom-type visit from the neighborhood goat), and complete radio silence.
In Longhand and Letters Read More »
The Atlantic’s dark salty crests, the screaming children, my first cold plunge, altered my studious mood like a tonic, cleared the must from my head, and refreshed my subway-sticky skin. Here, I had arrived in a new corner of the world, loud and fresh, jolting me from my library solitude.
Nonfiction Notebooks Read More »
Hello from Turkey! My husband and I have made our second stop of our Turkish travels in the region of Cappadocia, which is famous for its ancient cave ruins and fairy chimney rock formations.
I’m sorry, Pigeon(s) Read More »
by Gina Balibrera
Fifteen minutes before the Musée D’Orsay in Paris closed its doors, I entered the final room of my visit to the museum and encountered two “architectes de l’étrange”: François Garas and Henry Provensal. What struck me most about the work of both artists is the technical precision with which they approached their dreamlike subjects. Of course. The young men were gifted architects who, later in their careers, would go on to receive national awards and high-ranking commissions, and both trained at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. That these pieces exist at the top of wooded mountains, reach in skyward vertical lines, and reveal interior rooms that seem to open infinitely into each other, is especially strange in contrast with images of realized architectures of turn of the century Paris. That these pieces highlight the technical skills of these architects, the mastery of line, fealty to each structure’s projected physical integrity (and if you find yourself curious, take a look, especially at the earnest series of plans, each successive drawing more convincingly applied: this building might actually work) reminds me of Gabriel García Márquez’s famous anecdote about his grandmother telling “fantastic stories with a brick face.”
Architectures de l’étrange Read More »
by Nicholas Johnson
Ben Rivers’ Two Years at Sea is a portrait of Jake, a man who lives a lone subsistence lifestyle in the wilds of Scotland. Rivers’ film is a silent plotless meditation on life at a different pace and begs of the cinema goer a different kind of attention. A piece of contemporary romanticism, filmed on old equipment, removed from society, almost anthropological in its depiction of a human who moves at the speed of nature.
The Speed of Nature: Ben Rivers’ Two Years at Sea Read More »
by Monique Daviau
Back in August, before the beginning of the school year, I was sitting on the red sofa at Mighty Good Coffee in Ann Arbor, sipping a latte and reading one of the thirty-one books that MFA students are required to read for their reading exam. An older woman with a massive expanse of gray curls sat down beside me and began munching a cookie, and after evaluating whether or not I was willing to have a conversation with her, explained to me why she was so happy:
“I’ve just gotten a massage and I know that my massage therapist loves me because after he finished, he folded my socks a certain way. Look! That means ‘I Love You.’ If he folds them this way, see, (the lady rearranged the top of her sock) that means ‘I only want to be your friend,’ but he didn’t, and so he loves me.” She returned her sock to its previous “he loves me” configuration, and smiled some more.
