Excerpts
On War Writing: A Roundtable Discussion with Donald Anderson, Doug Anderson, Matt Gallagher, Sam Hamill, Peter Molin, Marilyn Nelson, and Stacey Peebles
Gathered here around a virtual table is an eclectic assembly of thinkers who offer their responses to a series of questions and issues connected to the literature of war. DON A: Donald Anderson / DOUG A: Doug Anderson / MG: Matt Gallagher / SH: Sam Hamill / PM: Peter Molin / MN: Marilyn Nelson / SP: Stacey …
A Walking Guide to the Heart of a City
In Nazareth an excavation of the ancient city lies underneath the ground. One can walk some of the old streets on Plexiglas platforms or descend into the ruins. Just outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem excavations commence in the Arab town of Silwan, believed now to be the actual ancient city of David, …
Paradise in Zurita: An Interview with Raúl Zurita
I can tell you that Raúl Zurita was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1950. That he studied engineering, then became a poet. That his early works were poignant responses to Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 military coup. That he was arrested at six in the morning on September 11, 1973, and beaten. That he was a founding member of …
Election Supervisor, Bosnia
I don’t remember the name of the city or who was shooting at whom. Instead, I see the shimmer of the toilet bowl, its pearl-like shine. Eighteen years after the fact, I’m still on the floor trying to curl my shoulders behind white porcelain. A foreign correspondent once told me that bathrooms are the safe …
When My Phone Trembles (for D’Angelo)
When my phoneTremblesAfter midnightI never think of good news: Someone’s birthday An overseas friend Forgetting The Time difference I never smell Apples baking Or …
The Beginning of the End of Hummingbird Cake
In the pineapple is the fiber we’ve been looking for, the sweet yellow threadiness we’d never confuse for stitches, for wound. In the banana is the quickening rot, the rot being the softest, sweetest stage of the fruit. *This is not Hawaii. There are no resorts here. We swim in no ocean but in One …
Street Dog Dreams: Lodhi Gardens
all nightshe dreams of gold jewelryburying her aliveand fine fine silksthat smell so sharply of fearher teeth ache then when the humans comeclattering their feetin the yellow squares of lighttheir breath heavy with desireand sweet smoke she wants to tell themwho she wasbut the man whistles so loudlyshe forgets everythingand barks at the moon
Sharon Olds. Stag’s Leap. Knopf.
Sharon Olds’s most recent collection of poems, Stag’s Leap, winner of the 2012 T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, tells the story of the breakup of the poet’s thirty-year marriage. Olds, a seasoned confessional poet whose first book, Satan Says, was published in 1980, is the first American woman to win the T. S. Eliot …
Dry Spell
La chicharra, Spanish for ‘‘cicada,’’trills with not one but two rolling r’slike the charlado who won’t stoptalking because he has too much to say. Fallen dead on the sidewalk, though,his song is hushed, a shell emptied out,carapace of silence, once a chorus,lacelike wings enfolded, mute supplicant. Shell fired in terra cotta, ashen undercarriage,pale green wing …