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Freedom to Read … and to Write
First, Nicole Sullivan, owner of The Bookies bookstore in Denver, explains why she’s thankful for the freedom to read and explains why we need to resist weakening our democracy’s commitment to that foundational ideal: https://sullivanic.substack.com/p/thankful-for-the-freedom-to-read Secondly, novelist and educator Janet Burroway details her travails in updating the fourth edition of her durable textbook, Imaginative Writing, to the new fifth edition. Her article is aptly titled “Slouching Toward Sensitivity,” a nod to both Yeats and Joan Didion.Read More
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“Thirteen Maqams” from Fady Joudah (a Palestinian lament)
I’m linking to this extraordinary rage-meditation before it gets taken down for whatever “national security” reason: A Palestinian Meditation in a Time of Annihilation: Thirteen Maqams for an Afterlife, by the magnificent Palestinian-American poet/translator and physician Fady Joudah. Thanks to LitHub for making it available, and thanks to Louise Glück, wherever she’s traveling these days, for choosing Joudah’s first book for the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2007. For anyone interested in the title of Joudah’s lament, here’s a good place to start exploring maqam.Read More
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Waiting for the Barbarians: A Sequel
This poem is an updated and repurposed version of “Waiting for the Barbarians,” by C. P. Cavafy, translated by Edmund Keeley. Read it here.Read More
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History Makes Fascist Parents Flip Their Lids
Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the classic graphic novel Maus, continues to inspire panic among the repressive nitwits seeking to ban their children from learning about history.Read More
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Introducing Sam-the-Sham Alito to the History His Argument Distorts
https://lithub.com/racism-patriarchy-and-power-siri-hustvedt-on-the-toxic-thinking-behind-the-supreme-courts-destruction-of-abortion-rights/ The issue is not abortion rights. The issue is one of sovereignty over one’s own body.Read More
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Fighting Fire with Fireproof Values
All proceeds from this auction will go to PEN America to support their efforts in support of the freedom to write and the freedom to read and be read.Read More
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Nikky Finney’s National Book Award Acceptance Speech (2011)
A colleague shared the video below with me many moons ago, thinking (rightly) that I might appreciate it. I decided to post it but apparently got interrupted, and lingered in my “drafts” folder until today. I remembered it today when I ran across a video of a reporter at an NRA rally in the South interviewing a gray-haired old fellow wearing a confederate flag tee shirt. The reporter remarked that some people viewed that flag as a racist symbol.Read More
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With Madonna in Kyiv: A Speech by Askold Melnyczuk
One of the most moving, clear-eyed pieces I’ve come across concerning the Russian attempted genocide taking place in Ukraine. Read now at AGNI Online.Read More
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What Comrade Trump and Comrade Tucker Want for America
https://lithub.com/on-the-ukrainian-poets-who-lived-and-died-under-soviet-suppression/Read More
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On Percival Everett’s The Trees (a 199-word review)
Clearly, Percival Everett’s longtime publisher, Graywolf Press, couldn’t quite figure out how to characterize his new novel, The Trees. On the back cover: “A blistering tale of revenge in the Deep South.” “Blistering,” a hype word from 1950s B-movie trailers. “Revenge,” yes! But: “In the Deep South”—well, the novel only begins there with gruesome murders and mutilations of white racists in Money, Mississippi, where Emmett Till was murdered in 1955. Yes, it’s all connected. But Money can’t contain the spirit of retribution fueled by American history. The real history, not the one we learned in school.Read More
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
