culture is made of people
Going through my library this weekend, I came across an old copy of Harold Bloom’s classic, The Western Canon. When it was published, Bloom’s book was (and remains today) controversial among educators and academics for its unshrinking advocacy of intellectual elitism and its defense of Western canonical literature. That is, the […]
Yesterday, I received a postcard from a friend studying in Rome that had the Italian Renaissance painter Caravaggio’s famous depiction of Narcissus staring at his own reflection in the water.
This blog isn’t wont to dole out dating advice. Thinking upon my own predicament trying to find romance, however, I realized that there’s something unique and highly peculiar about trying to date a critic.
The other day, I read an article in the New York Times regarding the American military’s turn to renewable energy. I question whether this is forward-looking or whether it’s the military getting up to speed with reality.
Poets from around the world—from Vietnam and the Netherlands and Brazil and Canada, quite different from one another, coming from quite distinct literary traditions—were part of the same conversation. They were trying to invent in language, trying to say what life was like for them, to bear witness to it, […]