How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love ‘Nation’ Readers How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love ‘Nation’ Readers
On a Nation cruise, the maritime adventure I usually refer to as “Lefties at Sea,” I used to take it for granted that some of the guests were troubled by my presence.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Calvin Trillin
Parting Parting
December 7, 1963 White morning flows into the mirror. Her eye, still old with sleep, meets itself like a sister. How they slept last night, the dream that caged them back to back, was nothing new. Last words, tears, most often come wrapped as the everyday familiar failure. Now, pulling the comb slowly through her loosened hair, she tries to find the parting; it must come out after all: hidden in all that tangle there is a way. 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. Over a half-century, Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) wrote twenty-two poems for The Nation and several reviews and essays, including a 2002 piece exploring the meaning of “antiwar.”
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Adrienne Rich
Langston Hughes and Touré on Loving Blackness in a Nation Ruled by White Supremacy Langston Hughes and Touré on Loving Blackness in a Nation Ruled by White Supremacy
The Black artist still must confront the choice between being a messenger about the community and being a pure maker of artistic product.
Mar 23, 2015 / Encounter / Langston Hughes and Touré
Night Thoughts Night Thoughts
On reverence, rebellion and other alternatives to social suicide.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / JoAnn Wypijewski
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
Michael Moore for President Michael Moore for President
If nominated, I will run. If elected, I will serve.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Michael Moore
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
The Starry Night The Starry Night
September 2, 1961 “That does not keep me from having a terrible need of—shall I say the word—religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars.” —Vincent Van Gogh, in a letter to his brother The town does not exist except where one black haired tree slips up like a drowned woman into the hot sky. The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars. Oh starry starry night! This is how I want to die. It moves. They are all alive. Even the moon bulges in its orange irons to push children, like a god, from its eye. The old unseen serpent swallows up the stars. Oh starry starry night! This is how I want to die: into the rushing beast of the night, sucked up by that great dragon, to split from my life with no flag, no belly, no cry. 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. Anne Sexton (1928–1974) won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for Live or Die.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Anne Sexton
1925–1935: Is Art Possible in the United States? 1925–1935: Is Art Possible in the United States?
There is no best country to write in. There is only the old world and the new.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / The Nation