Literature: Fiction, Poetry and Books
On the afternoon of our interview, he suggested we meet on a street corner. I arrived early and waited until I saw a man walk past wearing a blue trench coat with a blue rain hat pulled over his head. Shoulders hunched, he seemed to hesitate, and then I called his name.
My mother is dying. There are shuffling noises overhead coming from her bedroom. She has cancer, and her death is imminent. I am her only child. We never liked each other.
We leave all sins behind
in the pilgrimage.
We know it's not our land anymore.
We cross a sea of dangers...
Up on his platform he was still the timeless, majestic Mirko Pindar, ascending to the dangers of the sky, afterward autographing the T-shirts of young girls (usually, but not always, disappointed to see his age up close), selling off old photos of Mara and himself, then going back to his motel alone (but not always) to relax with a liter of slivovitz.
And what a mess Caleb and Camille Fang have made of Annie and her younger brother Buster! Labeled “Child A” and “Child B,” from infancy they were pressed into service—not always willingly, or even wittingly—as key players in their parents’ notorious performance art pieces.
What do you thinkg about talk shows?
Emily Dickinson: How dreary - to be - somebody!How public - like a frog. To tell your name - the livelong June To an admiring bog!
(I’m Nobody! Who are you?)
In the spirit of open access, through crafted essays and beautiful photos, the creators of Know the Past, Find the Future literally took the book to the streets (the book was left on park benches and subway stations) inviting the public directly into the quiet rooms and world-renowned collections of the New York Public library (William Blake, Virginia Woolf, J.D. Salinger, William Wordsworth, Charlotte Bronte, James Joyce, and Nancy Drew.)
Suppose for a moment
that people began to disappear,
one at a time,
off the street, from their yards, from the supermarket
parking lot.
Four Russian tanks were parked on the shoulder of the road. Gunshots punctuated the air. People were shouting. Another tank rolled down the hill toward the village crushing a cow in its path. The poor animal let out an anguished groan and then it was silent.
“No,” she whispered.
What is your favorite flower?
What is the relevance of Schimmel's work in the post-9/11 era? Her writings do not address terrorism or the conflicts that followed the end of the Cold War. Instead, she focused on the mystical interpretation of prophecy, the aesthetics of calligraphy, and the expression of spirituality in both the classical tongues of Arabic and Persian and the local languages of the Near East and South Asia.
Fear sent a cramp ripping through her belly. She knelt at the hearth, clenched her teeth and set a corn cake in the hot ashes alongside the others. The last time Ben got this mad, he broke a man’s jaw.
in the soiled richness of their dark speech
obstructing progress and breaking plows,
they know the blessed curse of not forgetting.
Wild River Review reprises, “The Power of Conversation,” covering David Grossman’s PEN World Voices Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture in April of 2007, during which he spoke about the importance of writing in the face of fear, "rapid and repeated media flashes," heartbreaking violence, and “the suffocation of the cliché.”
In 1941 the Nazis and their allies occupied Romania. Rose and her mother were forced into the Jewish ghetto along with the 60,000 Jews of Czernowitz. By the end of WW II 55,000 of the Jews of Czernowitz were annihilated by the Nazis. Rose Ausländer survived the three years of Nazi occupation through forced labor and going into hiding. While in hiding she became friends with well-known Jewish poet, Paul Celan, also from Czernowitz. During spring 1944 the Soviets occupied the city, and liberated the Jews. Rose worked then as a librarian.
And the water–/Oh how we wish to live near/the blue blue–
A wave passes through/
echoing the call/
of the other loon/
on the fog-lifted shore.
In the midst of the constant activity that is my life, I try to write. Conventional theory says that I must seize every free moment and rush to my computer, intent on using every free second on the project at hand. If not, says the critical elf on my left shoulder, I am guilty of the crime of sloth.
And you sit back/
in your deep sofas/
and turn us out/
after all is done/
cracking up in laughter/
at our helplessness/
but we go straight/
to the mandir/
behind the blue-dome...
Kabir wove a web of words encompassing all of life, love, God, and man’s eternal quest for meaning, for peace and happiness. He used the medium of ‘dohas’ and poems to put forth his experiences and thoughts on this quest.
While working for TIME magazine, I was assigned to interview an actor shooting a movie in New York. The movie was Midnight Cowboy. The big star in the movie was Jon Voight. While waiting to interview Voight, I whiled away the time talking to his co-star – a little-known actor whom no one seemed interested in and who seemed eager to please. His name, as it turned out, was Dustin Hoffman.
Named one of a hundred visionaries who could change your life by Utne Reader, Iyer offers us the opportunity to live by his own axiom: To write well, one must read well. With this, his own words tell his story best.
Why do I always go back
to where I have been,
seeking to repeat
the vision of last night?
"I’ll never regret being homeless. It makes me appreciate everything I have. Ever since I could remember I was taught to earn my own things. Today I’m doing just that and I’m proud." [Transcripts of the audio stories discussed in "My Power Ranger Had One Leg."]
To say that sex feeds death and death feeds sex is to enter into a world of biology, chemistry, evolutionary science, philosophy, literature and poetry. What could be so bad about that?
In the sixth century BC, legend has it that a wickedly playful character named Thespis of Icarius was born. According to some, Thespis’s life and work ushered in a new realm of Greek theater — individuals who acted out written plays in original performances.
de escorpiones de vasijas de barro y tierra
de tostado de habas de pailas de bronce calientes
WRR: You are joining us in a new era, that of the web. How do you feel about the fact that we are conducting this interview via email?
DICKENS: Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true. (“The Signalman.” Short Story)
All my life I have longed to be alone in a place like this. Even when everything was going well, as it often did. I can say that much. That it often did. I have been lucky. But even then, for instance in the middle of an embrace and someone whispering words in my ear I wanted to hear, I could suddenly get a longing to be in a place where there was only silence.
— Per Petterson, Out Stealing Horses
To be more specific, The Blind Faith Hotel is about a 14-year-old named Zoe who feels like her world is shattered when her fisherman father ships out to Alaska and her mother then moves Zoe and her siblings from their home in Washington State to a run-down farmhouse in the Midwest.
But, ‘Anything can happen’ also means: the stakes are high. You could make a friend. You could lose a friend. You could gain understanding. You could come up hard against all that you don’t know – hopefully both.
Yuko sat on the floor, cross-legged. She was text-messaging her beau, Ton'. In the kitchen 12 feet away, her mom, dad, and twin sister, Nuriko, were preparing the noodles.
Daringly outspoken, Osayande draws our attention to such societal ills with poetry, using it as a compelling medium to encourage critical thought and honest reflections on everything that has to do with diamonds in Southern Africa to Hurricane Katrina to Jay-Z’s rap lyrics. But his message is to all...
A candle for plain talk
A candle for the stairs
A candle for a hotel packed with refugees
A candle for a singer
A candle for broadcasters in their hideouts
A candle for a bottle of water
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