Aubade Aubade
Cell tower beacon a red boutonniere-- Sanankoroba on the hook w/ Senanque-- & flourishing thru this gunite, perishing world: a freesia fitted w/ aerofoils that turn in the wind & turn the wind to kilowatt-hours to power the flower forth--
Oct 14, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Andrew Zawacki
The Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue (Excerpt) The Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue (Excerpt)
If I sat next to you, spoke only to you, you would feel the warmth of my breath. As our shoulders touched you would shift, and I would know your movement as response. This is a world and we are in it. And still, as if this matters, I worry that you can't see me; I worry that you will go on without me in mind--even as our shoulders continue to touch, even as you carry my voice in your ear. At times I've wished for a structure to lean on, a landmark that's larger than the life around us, something that would govern us all. Maybe I want this because we almost had it. In truth, I was almost our Capital City. Did you know the longest total solar eclipse that will occur in the 21st century was experienced most fully this summer in Shanghai, in a city. China's most populated city. For six minutes and thirty-nine seconds, as the moon passed directly between the earth and the sun, for all those bodies all was darkness. I know how that feels. But daylight is the great extravagance. In the end I know this is true--even if I fall again and again into my private realities--because despite everything I am built out of lives.
Oct 14, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Claudia Rankine
Three Possible Explanations From the Nobel Committee Three Possible Explanations From the Nobel Committee
They have some justifying to do.
Oct 14, 2009 / Column / Calvin Trillin
It Costs Money to Die It Costs Money to Die
Forty-five years before Jessica Mitford's exposè of the funeral industry, Paul Blanshard found out just how expensive dying can be.
Oct 12, 2009 / Paul Blanshard
Opting Out Opting Out
Jack Kevorkian is leading the movement to allow people to take death in their own hands.
Oct 12, 2009 / Frank A. Oski
Baffled Dignity Baffled Dignity
Alain Resnais's Wild Grass and Margot Benacerraf's Araya.
Oct 8, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Stuart Klawans
End-of-Self Help End-of-Self Help
Is the task of philosophy "to learn how to die," or to teach that there is no such thing as a good death?
Oct 8, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Alexander Provan
Waiting for the Miracle: On Leonard Cohen Waiting for the Miracle: On Leonard Cohen
In Leonard Cohen's Afterworld, the trajectory between the latest hit and the wisdom of old has been a long one.
Oct 7, 2009 / Books & the Arts / David Yaffe
What Whoopi Goldberg (‘Not a Rape-Rape’), Harvey Weinstein (‘So-Called Crime’) et al. Are Saying in Their Outrage Over the Arrest of Roman Polanski What Whoopi Goldberg (‘Not a Rape-Rape’), Harvey Weinstein (‘So-Called Crime’) et al. Are Saying in Their Outrage Over the Arrest of Roman Polanski
He's been punished for this lapse--exiled for decades from LA!
Oct 7, 2009 / Column / Calvin Trillin
Thin Shangdu Thin Shangdu
The millipede of furious minds who concocts all steel sternumed glass, imagines the heart of what they make, all ruse & rooms of ruby ventricled chandeliers. Along the rear of this vertical frontier: tents & oil spilt ponds, a jungle of bloomers hangs on tiers of stocking string. An opera singer, once in tiger's masque, keens which echoes deep in the well of his welder's mask. A young boy dreams of mums.
Oct 7, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Cathy Park Hong