‘Trembling…Can Be Heard’ ‘Trembling…Can Be Heard’
A young man of 16, visiting his cousins in Calcutta in a house in a "middle-middle-class area," has just published his first poem. This not-yet-poet from Bombay is the narrator of...
May 30, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Amitava Kumar
Ghazal for Lauren Ghazal for Lauren
Sister, they say heed the hymn in your heart. You've learned you've an odd rhythm in your heart. You and I versus our brothers: pitched war. The four of us in the swim of your ...
May 30, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Leslie Chang
The Browning of America The Browning of America
In the past two decades, Richard Rodriguez has offered us a gamut of anecdotes, mostly about himself in action in an environment that is not always attuned to his own inner life. ...
May 30, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Ilan Stavans
Custom Custom
There is a difference it used to make, seeing three swans in this versus four in that quadrant of sky. I am not imagining. It was very large, as its effects were. Declarations ...
May 23, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Carl Phillips
Pursued by Love’s Demons Pursued by Love’s Demons
As if the back streets of our local city might dispense with their pyrrhic accumulation of dust and wineful tonality, offer a reprise of love itself, a careless love rendered g...
May 23, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Charlie Smith
The Evolution of Darwinism The Evolution of Darwinism
Popular perception notwithstanding, the theory of natural selection was accepted by every serious evolutionist long before Darwin. Earlier scientists interpreted it as the cleares...
May 23, 2002 / Books & the Arts / David Hawkes
Grabitization (Don’t Look) Grabitization (Don’t Look)
Almost everything that is wrong with Washington Post foreign editor David Hoffman's new book about Russia's transformation into a capitalist system, The Oligarchs, can be discerne...
May 23, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Matt Taibbi
Futbol Futbol
As if to move a flexible sphere from here to there with unassisted head and foot were natural and obvious. As if a dance could always bow to resolute constraint and never be dance...
May 16, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Alfred Corn
Patriotism’s Secret History Patriotism’s Secret History
Our most cherished national symbols—from the Pledge of Allegiance to "America the Beautiful" to Lady Liberty's poetry—are rooted in liberal ideals.
May 16, 2002 / Peter Dreier and Dick Flacks
Renewing Urban Renewal Renewing Urban Renewal
One of the things we do not do well in this country is learn from our mistakes. This is particularly true in the strengthening and rejuvenating of cities.
May 16, 2002 / Books & the Arts / Roberta Brandes Gratz