We Have Been Talking About Football’s Brutality for 120 Years We Have Been Talking About Football’s Brutality for 120 Years
American parents should keep their sons out of the game.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / The Editors
What Can the White Man Say to the Black Woman? What Can the White Man Say to the Black Woman?
Only one thing that the black woman might hear.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Alice Walker
Toward a Third Reconstruction Toward a Third Reconstruction
A conversation on The Nation, race and history at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture with Eric Foner, Darryl Pinckney, Mychal Denzel Smith, Isabel Wilkerson and Pat...
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / The Nation
The Fall of Rome The Fall of Rome
June 14, 1947 The piers are pummeled by the waves; In a lonely field the rain Lashes an abandoned train; Outlaws fill the mountain caves. Fantastic grow the evening gowns; Agents of the Fisc pursue Absconding tax-defaulters through The sewers of provincial towns. Private rites of magic send The temple prostitutes to sleep; All the literati keep An imaginary friend. Cerebrotonic Cato may Extol the Ancient Disciplines, But the muscle-bound Marines Mutiny for food and pay. Caesar’s double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK On a pink official form. Unendowed with wealth or pity, Little birds with scarlet legs, Sitting on their speckled eggs, Eye each flu-infected city. Altogether elsewhere, vast Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss, Silently and very fast. This article is part of The Nation’s 150th Anniversary Special Issue. Download a free PDF of the issue, with articles by James Baldwin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Toni Morrison, Howard Zinn and many more, here. W.H. Auden (1907–1973) contributed many poems and critical essays to The Nation between 1938 and 1951.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / W.H. Auden
Walt Whitman Is An Insult To Art, Says 22-Year Old Henry James Walt Whitman Is An Insult To Art, Says 22-Year Old Henry James
Drum-Taps is the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Henry James
John Steinbeck on the Violent Repression of the Fight for Migrant Workers’ Rights John Steinbeck on the Violent Repression of the Fight for Migrant Workers’ Rights
We now know that workers are being attacked not because they want higher wages, not because they are Communists, but simply because they want to organize.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / John Steinbeck
Young ‘Nation’ Writers On Creating Our Radical Future Young ‘Nation’ Writers On Creating Our Radical Future
As The Nation looks forward to the next 150 years, we asked some contributors to StudentNation, the campus-oriented section of our site, and former Nation interns what a radical fu...
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / The Nation
Clickbait Has Plagued Journalism for 125 Years Clickbait Has Plagued Journalism for 125 Years
The dragging down of the mighty has been not unpleasing sport in all ages.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / E.L. Godkin and Rochelle Gurstein
Is the UK Labor Party Too Moderate to Be in Power? Is the UK Labor Party Too Moderate to Be in Power?
Its leaders speak the language of social concern, yet their strategy is marked by extreme caution, an avoidance of any appearance of radicalism.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Edward Miliband
Hound Voice Hound Voice
December 10, 1938 Because we love bare hills and stunted trees And were the last to choose the settled ground, Its boredom of the desk or of the spade, because So many years companioned by a hound, Our voices carry; and though slumber bound, Some few half wake and half renew their choice, Give tongue, proclaim their hidden name—“hound voice.” The women that I picked spoke sweet and low And yet gave tongue. “Hound Voices” were they all. We picked each other from afar and knew What hour of terror comes to test the soul, And in that terror’s name obeyed the call, And understood, what none have understood, Those images that waken in the blood. Some day we shall get up before the dawn And find our ancient hounds before the door, And wide awake know that the hunt is on; Stumbling upon the blood-dark track once more, That stumbling to the kill beside the shore; Then cleaning out and bandaging of wounds, And chants of victory amid the encircling hounds. This article is part of The Nation’s 150th Anniversary Special Issue. Download a free PDF of the issue, with articles by James Baldwin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Toni Morrison, Howard Zinn and many more, here. William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) published his first poem in The Nation in 1933; his last appeared three months after his death.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / William Butler Yeats