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Book Rec: Lynn Xu’s Debts & Lessons (Omnidawn, 2013) [Sara Eliza Johnson]
I first encountered Lynn Xu’s work in a church in Seattle, which was fitting, as her reading was as close to a spiritual experience as a poetry reading can possibly get for me. I…
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On Debussy’s Birthday [by David Lehman]
08 / 22 / 08 Today in 1862Claude Debussy was born.I remember where I was and what I was doingone hundred years and two months later:elementary algebra, trombone practice,Julius Caesar on the record playerwith…
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Art that Haunts: Ovid’s Actaeon [Sara Eliza Johnson]
Source: McSweeney's Some of the most affecting artwork—or, at least, the art that really “gets” me—is the art that haunts. Not many scenes in literature have stuck with me quite like Ovid’s tale of…
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A Little Tribute to the Bee [Sara Eliza Johnson]
Electron micrograph of the honeybee. Credit: Annie Cavanagh. Source: wordlesstech.com When I was a graduate student living in Oregon, a colony of bees built a hive in the wall of my garage apartment. I…
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The World is Too Much with Us [by William Wordsworth]
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid…
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Poetry & Inhumanity: “Anti-War Art: Nearly Impossible”? [Sara Eliza Johnson]
Deep in the midst of the most recent Israel-Palestine conflict, Noah Berlatksy asks over at The Atlantic if anti-war art is truly possible. His qualified answer is that it is not possible—or is "nearly…
