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Cavafy: “Ithaca gave to you the beautiful journey”
Daniel Mendelsohn has published new translations of the C. P. Cavafy: Collected Poems. He tells a story on NPR about how he came to Cavafy as a classics student who was bored with touring Greek...
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A Word is the Search for It, part 4: The Living Word
The abridged translation of Thought and Language also omitted passages which the translators considered obscure, overly philosophical, and extraneous to the book’s scientific arguments. In the...
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A Word is the Search for It, part 5: The Renewal of Motive
Early in my study of Lev Vygotsky’s work I asked an experimental psychologist, an eminent authority on the evolution of the mammalian brain, what he knew about Vygotsky. He was working on sabbatical in...
View ArticleCafé Mouffe: Paul Celan’s Todesfuge
After a week of searching for the renewal of thought in inner speech, let there be its full expression in external; speech, through poetry. Had Osip Mandelstam survived Stalin’s labor camps, I...
View ArticleListening to the Voice of Anna Akhmatova
After imagining the voice of Osip Mandelstam in Paul Celan’s anguished ferocity, I searched YouTube to find what else might be out there in the documentary record. I’ve never heard of the existence of...
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Anna Akhmatova in the Modernist Moment
Nathan Altman. Portrait of Anna Akhmatova. 1914. The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. [Source: Anna Akhmatova Foundation] Anna Akhmatova had become a cultural icon by the time Nathan Altman...
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Iran Blocks Travel By Poet Simin Behbahani
Iranian poet Simin Behbahani speaks at a press conference in Tehran in 2007. [Photo by Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images/NPR] The repressive regime in Tehran has seized the passport of poet Simin...
View ArticlePoet Suheir Hammad : “Fear the Unexploded”
Few poets get this kind of glitzy audience. Suheir Hammad earns it. via TED: “Poet Suheir Hammad performs two spine-tingling spoken-word pieces: “What I Will” and “break (clustered)” — meditations on...
View ArticleFor Brendan: Moose Tracks in the Snow
When I first read The Practice of the Wild twenty years ago, I never imagined it would have its own film trailer with Facebook page. Gary Snyderdeserves new media, of course, although I still believe...
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At 86, Donald Hall Says He Doesn’t Have the Testosterone to Write More Poems
Photo of poet Donald Hall [Source: NPR/Linda Kunhardt/Courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt] I’m captivated by the sound of Donald Hall’s voice in this NPR interview. He sounds just like Lou...
View ArticleCelebrating Our Cultural Legacy: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2009 White House Debut
Today is Barack Obama’s last full day in the White House. If that saddens you as it saddens me, here is a consolation. Lin-Manuel Miranda performed a nascent version of “Alexander Hamilton” at a White...
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