Library Man: On Claude Lévi-Strauss Library Man: On Claude Lévi-Strauss
With a sharp eye for cultural patterns and a keen feel for the shape of a story, Claude Lévi-Strauss was a poet in the laboratory of anthropology.
Jan 19, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Thomas Meaney
Sonnet of Exemplary Sentences From the Chapter Pertaining to the Nature of Pronouns in Emile Benveniste’s ‘Problems in General Linguistics’ (Paris 1966) Sonnet of Exemplary Sentences From the Chapter Pertaining to the Nature of Pronouns in Emile Benveniste’s ‘Problems in General Linguistics’ (Paris 1966)
Sonnet of Exemplary Sentences From the Chapter Pertaining to the Nature of Pronouns in Emile Benveniste's Problems in General Linguistics (Paris 1966) This time I forgive you but I shall not forgive you again. I observe that he forgives you but he will not forgive you again. Although I eat this fish I don't know its name. Spirits watch over the soul of course. I suppose and I presume. I pose and I resume. I suppose I have a horse. How in the world can you afford this house I said and she said I had a good divorce. Strangers are warned that here there is a fierce, fast dog. Whores have no business getting lost in the fog. Is it to your ears or your soul that my voice is intolerable? Whether Florinda lays a hand on his knee or his voluble, he pleads a headache and the narrator concludes, The problem is insoluble.
Jan 19, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Anne Carson
Dorothy Wordsworth Dorothy Wordsworth
Dorothy Wordsworth The daffodils can go fuck themselves. I'm tired of their crowds, yellow rantings about the spastic sun that shines and shines and shines. How are they any different from me? I, too, have a big messy head on a fragile stalk. I spin with the wind. I flower and don't apologize. There's nothing funny about good weather. Oh, spring again, the critics nod. They know the old joy, that wakeful quotidian, the dark plot of future growing things, each one labeled Narcissus nobilis or Jennifer Chang. If I died falling from a helicopter, then this would be an important poem. Then the ex-boyfriends would swim to shore declaiming their knowledge of my bulbous youth. O, Flower, one said, why aren't you meat? But I won't be another bashful shank. The tulips have their nervous joie-de-vivre, the lilacs their taunt. Fractious petals, stop interrupting my poem with boring beauty. All the boys are in the field gnawing raw bones of ambition and calling it ardor. Who the hell are they? This is a poem about war.
Jan 19, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Jennifer Chang
Perfect-Bound: On Elizabeth Hardwick Perfect-Bound: On Elizabeth Hardwick
Elizabeth Hardwick found New York's jittery impermanence and inchoate density to be an obstacle for the fiction writer.
Jan 19, 2011 / Books & the Arts / James Marcus
An Atlas of Reckonings An Atlas of Reckonings
The horrors of The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database arise through the cumulative weight of its abstract pieces of information.
Jan 19, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Robin Einhorn
Invoking Dr. King, Charles Barkley Stands Strongly for LGBT Rights Invoking Dr. King, Charles Barkley Stands Strongly for LGBT Rights
Charles Barkley felt a responsibility to use his platform on a TNT pregame show to speak out for Gay Rights. Given who spoke before him, we should be grateful that he did.
Jan 19, 2011 / Dave Zirin
Nation Conversations: Carne Ross on Diplomacy and WikiLeaks Nation Conversations: Carne Ross on Diplomacy and WikiLeaks
The former British diplomat recounts his own whistleblowing and the benefits and dangers of the WikiLeaks dipomatic cables dump.
Jan 19, 2011 / The Nation
Obama Pulls a Clinton on Deregulation Obama Pulls a Clinton on Deregulation
Bill Clinton embraced the corporate money guys in an effort to purchase a second term. On Tuesday, Barack Obama veered sharply down that same course.
Jan 19, 2011 / Robert Scheer
Easy as ABC? Tracking the ‘Inescapable’ Racial Angle in the MLK Parade Bomb Story Easy as ABC? Tracking the ‘Inescapable’ Racial Angle in the MLK Parade Bomb Story
For journalism that connects the dots between Spokane, Tucson, the rise of an extremist American right and, yes, the uptick in violent rhetoric that feeds it, look to David Neiwert...
Jan 19, 2011 / Nancy Goldstein
Not Enough on Cuba Embargo Not Enough on Cuba Embargo
The president makes some progress, but not enough, on ending the anachronism called the US embargo against Cuba.
Jan 19, 2011 / Bob Dreyfuss