Books
A Graphic Novel Chronicles Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Years
Woody Guthrie was responding to the hardships of the Great Depression, but he may as well have been singing about now.
Books
Books
Reader’s Diary: ‘The Brexit Crisis’
The presses roll fast when there are no presses to roll.
Books
America’s Philosopher Poet
The Swimmer is John Koethe’s tenth book of poetry. For many years, he was Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee until he retired in 2010.
Books
Cosmic Wind: Yoshimasu Gozo’s 'Alice Iris Red Horse'
In 2003 I received an invitation to attend a reading by the poet Yoshimasu Gozo, someone I had never heard of. I asked around, and was told that Gozo was an avant-garde poet who read in a bygone oracular style.
Books
Reader’s Diary: Darryl Pinckney's ‘Black Deutschland’
This is not so much a second novel as a mature reimagining of what a youthful first novel might have been.
Books
The Deceptively Cheerful Stripes of Deadly Fumigation Tents
You'd think that fun lies with their walls of colorful stripes, but inside the bright tents is the deadly gas of sulfuryl fluoride, quietly building up to eliminate nesting drywood termites.
Interview
Retracing a Lifetime of Urban Activism Through Jane Jacob's Last Interview
"The kind of planning for a city that would really work would be a sort of informed, intelligent improvisation, which is what most of our planning in life is in any case," said Jane Jacobs in a 1962 interview with Mademoiselle, conducted just after the 1961 publication of her influential The Death a
Books
Reader’s Diary: Max Stirner's ‘The Ego and His Own’
In a recent long, too long, much too long article in the London Review of Books, Andrew O’Hagan quoted John Lanchester paraphrasing dear old Edmund Wilson to the effect that poets feel differences among themselves as tantamount to lying.
Books
Placing Hope in Ritual: Gabriel Ojeda-Sague's Oil and Candle
In Oil and Candle, the debut full-length poetry collection by Gabriel Ojeda-Sague, ritual and religion are turned to as salves for various societal issues, including racism, homophobia, and war.
Books
A New Film and Book Seek the True Hieronymus Bosch
Roughly 30 minutes into Pieter van Huystee’s first feature-length film, Hieronymus Bosch: Touched by the Devil, Gabriele Finaldi, former deputy director of conservation and research at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, gives a sterling, succinct answer as to why El Bosco (as the Dutch artist is known i
Books
Outdoor Art and the Private Playgrounds of Privilege
It starts with the title: Outdoor Art. Simple, straightforward, you might think.
Books
How the Bulldozer Smoothed Postwar America into a Blank Slate
Demolition and construction following World War II radically altered the landscape of the United States, and one machine in particular allowed for such a dramatic overhaul.