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Ready to Serve: “They Looked After Me” [by Mari L’Esperance]
(Ed. note: This is the third post in our Ready to Serve series. Find previous posts here. sdh) For nearly three years in the ‘80s I waited tables at a waterfront steak-and-seafood restaurant in…
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Tales of Spare Change (1964-1998) [by Alan Ziegler]
In the 1960s, they are commonly known as bums or panhandlers, and most have a story to sell for some spare change. A panhandler in Times Square tells me how bad I am and…
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Flowers: A Marriage of Poetry and Music in Iran [by Sholeh Wolpé]
In 1955, Davood Pirniya, a music lover and a well-connected and powerful man within the Iranian government, used his political resources to fund and establish an orchestra, bringing in the best vocalists and composers…
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Injuring Film or Opera With Bad Subtitles [by Sholeh Wolpé]
Have you ever been to a foreign film or opera where you got the feeling you were missing the point of the story, or had been cheated of the poetry of the dialogue, poem,…
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Next Line, Please: The Winning Stanza Refuses to Cave
David Lehman has picked a winning stanza for the Next Line, Please contest hosted by The American Scholar. But it's not over yet: you're writing a sestina so there are plenty of opportunities to…
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Translating Walt Whitman [by Sholeh Wolpé]
In 2013, the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa launched a multimedia web gallery with 52 weekly installments of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself in 15 languages. Each installment of the poem…
