When the 'Native Son' Became 'The Man Who Lived Underground'
One of Richard Wright's best books went unpublished in his lifetime, due to "unbearable" scenes of police brutality. Now at last it is in print.
Literature
Poetry Tuesday!: "The Dormouse and the Doctor" by A.A. Milne
"There once was a Dormouse who lived in a bed / Of delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red) / And all the day long he'd a wonderful view / Of geraniums (red) and delphiniums (blue)...."
Poetry Wednesday!: "somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond" by e.e. cummings
"(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; / only something in me understands / the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) / nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands"
Poetry Wednesday!: "Стихи о Петербурге" ("Verses About Petersburg") by Anna Akhmatova (Russian)
"Вновь Исакий в облаченье / Из литого серебра. / Стынет в грозном нетерпенье / Конь Великого Петра...."
Poetry Tuesday!: "A-Sitting on a Gate" by Lewis Carroll
"I'll tell thee everything I can; / There's little to relate, / I saw an aged, aged man, / A-sitting on a gate...."
Louis Menand: 'Freedom Was the Slogan of the Times'
Why postwar culture from Jack Kerouac to Andy Warhol to James Baldwin to Susan Sontag to Yoko Ono battled boundaries hemming them in.
Poetry Monday!: "When We Two Parted" by George Gordon, Lord Byron
"When we two parted / In silence and tears, / Half broken-hearted / To sever for years, / Pale grew thy cheek and cold, / Colder thy kiss; / Truly that hour foretold / Sorrow to this...."
Poetry Monday (with cat)!: "À la mémoire d'une chatte naine que j'avais" by Jules Laforgue (French)
"Ô mon beau chat frileux, quand l'automne morose / Faisait glapir plus fort les mômes dans les cours, / Combien passâmes-nous de ces spleeniques jours / À rêver face à face en ma chambre bien close...."
Poetry Monday!: "The Man from Snowy River" by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson
"There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around / That the colt from Old Regret had got away, / And had joined the wild bush horses — he was worth a thousand pound, / So all the cracks had gathered to the fray...."
Poetry Tuesday!: "Alone" by Edgar Allan Poe
"From childhood’s hour I have not been / As others were — I have not seen / As others saw — I could not bring / My passions from a common spring — ..."
Poetry Tuesday!: "Ах, что-то мне не верится, что я, брат, воевал…" ("Somehow I can't believe, brother, I really went to war…") by Bulat Okudzhava
To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union: "Ах, что-то мне не верится, что я, брат, воевал. А может, это школьник меня нарисовал..."
Poetry Tuesday!: "Loveliest of Trees" by A.E. Housman
"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now / Is hung with bloom along the bough, / And stands about the woodland ride / Wearing white for Eastertide...."
Poetry Monday!: "Lines Written in Dejection" by William Butler Yeats
"When have I last looked on / The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies / Of the dark leopards of the moon?"
Poetry Monday!: "Les deux voix" ("The two voices") by Victor Hugo (French)
"Frères ! de ces deux voix étranges, inouïes, / Sans cesse renaissant, sans cesse évanouies, / Qu’écoute l’éternel durant l’éternité, / L’une disait : nature ! et l’autre : humanité !..."
Poetry Monday!: "The Persian Version" by Robert Graves
"Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon / The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon...."
Poetry Tuesday!: "The Pobble Who Has No Toes" by Edward Lear
"The Pobble who has no toes / Had once as many as we; / When they said 'Some day you may lose them all;' / He replied 'Fish, fiddle-de-dee!'..."
AMC, Amazon Offer Up Television Adaptations of Two Hot Books
Too Close and The Underground Railroad provide wildly different experiences.
Poetry Tuesday!: "Листья" ("Leaves") by Fyodor Tyutchev
"О буйные ветры, / Скорее, скорей! / Скорей нас сорвите / С докучных ветвей! / Сорвите, умчите, / Мы ждать не хотим, / Летите, летите! / Мы с вами летим!.."
Poetry Monday!: "anyone lived in a pretty how town" by e.e. cummings
only the snow can begin to explain how children are apt to forget to remember with up so floating many bells down...
Poetry Monday!: "The Four Friends" by A.A. Milne
"Ernest was an elephant, a great big fellow, / Leonard was a lion with a six-foot tail, / George was a goat, and his beard was yellow, / And James was a very small snail...."
SPECIAL Poetry Monday!: "Romance de la luna, luna" by Federico García Lorca (Spanish)
"La luna vino a la fragua / con su polisón de nardos. / El niño la mira, mira. / El niño la está mirando...."
SPECIAL Poetry Tuesday!: "Herbst" ("Autumn") by Rainer Maria Rilke (German)
Wir alle fallen. Diese Hand da fällt. Und sieh dir andre an: es ist in allen.
The Overly Examined Life of Henry David Thoreau
Cartoonist Peter Bagge looks at Henry David Thoreau's life at Walden and beyond
SPECIAL Poetry Tuesday!: "Mednyi vsadnik" ("The Bronze Horseman") by Aleksandr Pushkin
"From here, we'll show the Swede our saber; / We'll build a city on the sea, / To better spite our haughty neighbor. / Our destiny is manifest -- / To cut a window to the West..."
SPECIAL Poetry Monday!: "La chambre double" by Charles Baudelaire
« Et hue donc ! bourrique ! Sue donc, esclave ! Vis donc, damné ! »
SPECIAL Poetry Monday!: "The Epic (Including the Morte d'Arthur)" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
In honor of my 100 YouTube subscribers, a special reading of a lovely Arthurian poem.
Poetry Monday!: "So That's Who I Remind Me Of" by Ogden Nash
"When I consider men of golden talents, / I'm delighted, in my introverted way, / To discover, as I'm drawing up the balance, / How much we have in common, I and they...."
Poetry Monday!: "Vers dorés" by Gérard de Nerval
"Homme, libre penseur ! te crois-tu seul pensant / Dans ce monde où la vie éclate en toute chose ? / Des forces que tu tiens ta liberté dispose, / Mais de tous tes conseils l'univers est absent...."
Why Dr. Seuss Is Worth Defending
Banishing him from library shelves is a slippery slope.
The iocane powder trick with the Vizzini meta-twist
Where does this variation on Mithridatism come from?
Poetry Monday!: "Rules and Regulations" by Lewis Carroll
Written at age 13 for his younger brother and sister: "A short direction / To avoid dejection, / By variations / In occupations, / And prolongation / Of relaxation, / And combinations / Of recreations..."
Poetry Monday!: "Dane-geld" by Rudyard Kipling
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld, / No matter how trifling the cost; / For the end of that game is oppression and shame, / And the nation that pays it is lost!"
Poetry Tuesday!: "Ia mechtoiu lovil ukhodiashchie teni" ("With my dreams I caught the departing shadows") by Konstantin Balmont
"Я мечтою ловил уходящие тени, / Уходящие тени погасавшего дня..."
Poetry Monday: "My Three Loves" by Henry S. Leigh
"I knew not which to make my pet, — my pipe, cigar, or cigarette..."
Poetry Monday!: "love is more thicker than forget" by e.e. cummings
"love is more thicker than forget / more thinner than recall / more seldom than a wave is wet / more frequent than to fail..."
Poetry Monday!: "Chanson d'automne" by Oscar Milosz
"Écoutez la voix du vent dans la nuit..."
Poetry Monday!: "Evolution" by Langdon Smith
"When you were a tadpole and I was a fish in the Paleozoic time..."
Poetry Monday: "Would I Be Shrived?" by John D. Swain
A second member of the small genre of poems pretending to be by the French poet François Villon.
Poetry Tuesday!: "The reticent volcano keeps…" by Emily Dickinson
In this age of Internet and social media, Emily Dickinson tells us to be as quiet as a volcano.