Books and Ideas

‘The Ghat of the Only World’: Agha Shahid Ali in Brooklyn ‘The Ghat of the Only World’: Agha Shahid Ali in Brooklyn

The first time that Agha Shahid Ali, the great Kashmiri poet, spoke to me about his approaching death was in April of last year. The conversation began routinely. I had telephone...

Jan 24, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Amitav Ghosh

Lines Beyond the Nakba Lines Beyond the Nakba

Mahmoud Darwish burst on the Arab poetic scene in the mid-1960s with the publication in Beirut of poems written while he was living in Haifa, Israel, and working as a translator ...

Jan 24, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Taline Voskeritchian

Three Poems Three Poems

* Zero built a nest In my navel. Incurable Longing. Blood too-- From violent actions It's a nest belonging to one But zero uses it And its pleasure is its ow...

Jan 17, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Fanny Howe

2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize

The Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize of $10,000, awarded annually for the most outstanding book of poems published in the United States by an American, is administered mutually by th...

Jan 17, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Ann Lauterbach

In the Year of Harry Potter, Enter the Dragon In the Year of Harry Potter, Enter the Dragon

Earthsea, Ursula Le Guin's magical world of islands and archipelagoes, is going through a period of intense, uncomfortable social change. The old ways no longer work and the new ...

Jan 10, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Meredith Tax

Missile Shield or Holy Grail? Missile Shield or Holy Grail?

Nike-Zeus, Nike-X, Sentinel, Safeguard, Star Wars, X-ray lasers, spaced-based neutron particle beams, Brilliant Pebbles, Ground-Based Midcourse National Missile Defense, Midcours...

Jan 10, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Walter C. Uhler

Not All, Only a Few Return Not All, Only a Few Return

(after Ghalib) Just a few return from dust, disguised as roses. What hopes the earth forever covers, what faces? I too could recall moonlit roofs, those nigh...

Jan 10, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Agha Shahid Ali

Don’t Call It Night Don’t Call It Night

In the United States the writer tends to become an entrepreneur, competing with other literary vendors marketing their characters and language, their humor or drama, to a skeptic...

Jan 3, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Morris Dickstein

Plumping for Pinochet Plumping for Pinochet

Why in 1973 did Chile's democracy, long considered the crown jewel of Latin America, turn into Augusto Pinochet's murderous regime? Why did the United States, which helped Pinoch...

Jan 3, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Greg Grandin

Artistic Economics Artistic Economics

At work recently, I went to get a ham sandwich from the university cafeteria. I discovered, to my vocal dismay, that the well-loved food counter offering homemade fare had been t...

Jan 3, 2002 / Books & the Arts / David Hawkes

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