“We must take the language/by surprise;/seal its every utterance/with a kiss or tear…”
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NATO & the Global Enduring Disorder
This project examines the coordination failures surrounding international approaches to climate change, tax havens, cryptocurrency, the crises in Ukraine, Syria, and Afghanistan, and more—seeking to move past merely problematizing failures—to proposing solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.Erich Prince’s Latest Column
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Tag: arts
Un Carro Triste: A Melancholic Car
On the Road to Damascus
“So here I am in the Radnor Township/Police Department Drunk Tank/in a white paper jumpsuit, shoelaces/removed to be sure I don’t hang myself…”
Dictionary
“Sometimes—in the middle of fair night—/when disobedient moon turns vandal/and violently rips off the bolts/of my window-shutters, my eyelids…”
Bird Life: A Triptych
“No thought, as that of mine, to complete the bare/Purpose of their being, which is to feed and breed,/Become another edible, leave another seed.”
Mark Goldblatt and the Art of Persuasion
“I cannot argue with his characterization of Foucault, Derrida, and Barthes as a ‘triumvirate of stooges,’ but with me, he is preaching to the choir. How will he convince the postmodernists?”
Doing the Woke
“The more these women agreed to be shamed for their ‘whiteness,’ the more I wondered why doing so made them feel ethical. Feeling shame makes nobody ethical. Just uncomfortable.”
Review: “Yellowface” by R.F. Kuang
“Yellowface has its strengths. Kuang is terrific when parodying the loathsome impulses of social media and book reviewers. She also offers wisdom about the publishing industry and the inner life of a writer.”
On Wimbledon Champion Vic Seixas Reaching the Century Mark
“As he reaches the century mark, Elias Victor Seixas Jr. deserves our respect and gratitude for leading a long and extraordinary life.”
Letter to the Editor: In Defense of Rereading
“If reading is about a relationship with a text, then my subsequent readings represented different relationships. As I changed, the book changed. I was a different person reading a different book. I am not even sure it is accurate to call this rereading.”
Should You Read the Same Book Twice?
“Amid this exchange about the importance of recentering the essential literature of our history, I posed to Mac Donald a question that has been on my mind since my days as a student at The Haverford School: Should one make a habit of reading the same book twice?”
The Lie of the Land
“And because you are beautiful do not think/The Nereids will hear you, or Neptune wake/And the sea calm, and you will not sink”
Traffic
“And where, but in constant circularity/Is all this moving headed?/The answer Cannot be death…”
A Once Unnecessary Reminder: Criticism Produces Good Works
“My own song ‘Alabama’ richly deserved the shot Lynyrd Skynyrd gave me with their great record. I don’t like my words when I listen to it. They are accusatory and condescending…”
The Tide
“‘Where now security, what to trust?’/The cycle of an invisible moon has/Our harbor in its force, another period/Has begun: the existing limits to be tested.”
Love Makings
“Yet there is no one thing, no attribute/Of yours that I can fix on, nothing/I can abstract, describe, isolate…”
