Literature

June 9, 2020, 4:50am Another week, another brand-new batch of books to order from one of these black-owned independent bookstores! * Sam Lansky, Broken People(Hanover Square Press) “With humor, verve, and cut-to-the-bone revelations, Lansky takes readers on an enthralling adventure.”–Publishers Weekly Jennifer Worley, Neon Girls(Harper Perennial) “A vivid and erudite exploration of class struggle and gender identity.”–Kirkus
0 Comments
Poets, as Percy Shelley memorably said, are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. For W. H. Auden, poetry ‘makes nothing happen’. What role does the poet have on the political scene? Have poets engaged memorably with their own political moment? Below, we introduce ten classic political poems – poems which are ‘political’ on a range
0 Comments
The coronavirus pandemic is dramatically disrupting not only our daily lives but society itself. This show features conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers and writers about the deeper economic, political, and technological consequences of the pandemic. It’s our new daily podcast trying to make longterm sense out of the chaos of today’s global
0 Comments
TOMORROW: In 1917, poet Gwendolyn Brooks, the African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize, is born. READINGS ON RACISM, WHITE SUPREMACY AND POLICE VIOLENCE: Aaron Robertson on George Floyd and Black pessimism · Daryl Pinckney on the American tradition of anti-Black vigilantism · Angela Davis on Black Lives Matter, Palestine, and the future of radicalism · Carol Anderson on the history of respectability politics and their failure to keep Black
0 Comments
Previously, we chose some of the greatest war poems; now, it’s the turn of peace. Have poets written as well about peace as they have about war? Although war poetry has provided an important service (if we can call poetry a ‘service’ as such) in bringing to light the horror, tragedy, and atrocity of warfare,
0 Comments
June 5, 2020, 12:29pm Nancy Bass Wyden, owner of New York City’s Strand Bookstore—one of the largest independent bookstores in the country—purchased stock in Amazon three times between April 6 and May 1, totaling somewhere between $115,000 and $250,000, according to Barron’s. If you’ll recall this was a time period which saw the coronavirus pandemic
0 Comments