1. I was crossing Harvard Square, coming from the Coop, on my way to Adams House, where my study was. I saw Lowell near the kiosk and he saw me about the same time. He waved me over. “The most extraordinary thing has happened,” he said. “Can you come with me?”
Culturewatch
Dreams Fade Into the Everblue: Lori McKenna’s Bygone Humanism
“Here is what I know” is the first line of “A Mother Never Rests,” the opening track off country singer Lori McKenna’s latest LP. “Even when she’s sleeping she’s still dreaming about you”–her voice is weary yet sure of wisdoms both received and earned. McKenna dives into the laundry-list of domestic chores and anxieties expected of a mother in red-state America.
Patriotism and the Christian Spirit
Proust rejected (respectfully) Tolstoi’s polemic against patriotism in the following short review, which was translated by Sylvia Townsend Warner and included in Marcel Proust on Art and Literature (1957).
iLied
I spent my middle school years without a phone. I had an iPod. There’s not much difference but back then a phone and iPod seemed a world apart. (An iPod cannot use cellular data, so you can’t use it without wifi. iPods also can’t make phone calls.) I remember the biggest (most shaming) difference was that on the back of the iPod, iPod was engraved in large letters. Whenever I used my iPod around people I used my fingers to cover that humiliating logo.
Aretha (& “the blacks”)
Aretha’s “Tree of Life” (see below) has a new poignancy since her death. No need for me to break down her funky, Pan-African, pantheist promesse de bonne heure, just press play (please).
What Just Happened? (Kiarostami in Tokyo & Obama in Johannesburg)
The late Abbas Kiarostami’s Like Falling in Love (2012) was originally titled “The End,” which would’ve underscored the final scene’s go-to-smash upending of viewers’ presumptions. The film, set in Japan, works like a gently penetrative Ozu-y character study until it’s transformed utterly by a sudden act of violence in the last second(s).
A Response to “When Children Say They’re Trans”
Talk About “Abortion”
It is more crucial than ever to speak about “abortion rights,” not choice. The word “choice” is meaningless and always has been a running-scared retreat from the real matter of bodily sovereignty for females. Biological determinism is a social idea. Just like social Darwinism, capitalism, and religion.
Razzle Dazzle: Alison Stone’s New Poems
Alison Stone has been a vital voice in First of the Month‘s mixes for nearly 20 years. The following poems from her new collection, Dazzle, testify to her undimmed instinct for happiness inside the dailiness of life. Not that she’s Ms. Beamish. Stone often gives First first shot at her more engagé poems. One of them recently got up Facebook’s nose.
On the Block II: Excerpt from Gilbert Sorrentino’s “Crystal Vision”
What follows is a swatch of Crystal Vision (1981)–a novel of almost pure dialogue by the late Gilbert Sorrentino.
Hooking Up: Benjamin DeMott on Tom Wolfe
Benjamin DeMott published this summative review of a late collection of Tom Wolfe’s work in 2001. It makes a good case for the reviewer (whose own work has seemed fresh to pundits lately).
On Waller-Bridge
When asked (by your editor) if she enjoyed Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s shows, Laurie Stone replied “I am a huge and maybe the hugest admirer of Fleabag and Killing Eve…She is brilliant, and brilliantly alternative, food for the starving.”
John Berryman On News We Can’t Use
Who can keep up? It wasn’t so long ago that we were concerned because the print press couldn’t keep up with the 24/7 news channels, which had scandals and disasters on the air while they were still in progress. Now, the 24/7 news channels can’t keep up with themselves: by the time they’ve assembled a panel of Wise Ones to analyze the most recent infamy, another one has unfolded. Or two. Or three. There is no pause, no day without too many tales to tell, let alone to tell well.
Which is why John Berryman’s 1939 poem “World-Telegram” has new currency. It is about the weight of headlines, of leads, of information that can barely be understood, let alone borne.