In three of this month’s collections, we find ourselves in the shower with the speaker. In Armen Davoudian’s opening poem, a mother and son: the speaker steps out in his mother’s “lavender robe de chambre,” careful not to spill though “you’d forgive the spillage, or forget.” The poem ends, “What else will you love me […]
All images from The Crick , published by Twin Palms Publishers. © Jim Mangan. 1. The boys arrive slowly, appearing one by one on horseback over the lip of the ravine, plunging down the steep banks with their mounts sliding on their hocks, or in the case of Ephraim arriving in a truck pulling a […]
The director and translator Bryan Doerries stood by the stage in Columbia University’s Miller Theatre the other night, watching an audience of students, faculty, and alumni file in. Since 2006, Doerries, who founded Theater of War Productions, has put on performances in locations riven by trauma and strife: military bases, prisons, gang-dominated neighborhoods, opioid-gripped towns. […]
IN THE CORNER of the internet dedicated to the arcana of MTV’s Teen Mom franchise, the “good edit” is a topic of frequent debate. Whose footage is cut and arranged in an arc towards redemption, whose towards failure? In her new memoir Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story , Leslie Jamison exhibits a similar concern […]
The Blue Line opened, in 1990 The planner, engineer, and architect Earl Gales didn’t enjoy the spotlight much. He liked to fly under the radar, staying in the background while letting other people shine. But he played an important role in creating our rail system, even if it isn’t obvious to riders today. Gales’ dad […]
‘Ripe Figs’ is a short story by the American writer Kate Chopin (1850-1904). Subtitled ‘An Idyl’, the story is one of the shortest Chopin wrote, running to just one page. She wrote the story on 26 February 1892 and gave it the working title ‘Babette’s Visit’; it was published in Vogue magazine in 1893 (Chopin […]
“Louder Than Hunger” joins a very small shelf of novels and memoirs that address eating disorders from a male point of view. Credit…Ben Wiseman LOUDER THAN HUNGER , by John Schu Jake Stacey is trying to erase himself from the world. Just 13, he is wasting away — shunning food and rollerblading frantically to drop […]
Few things are more comedically satisfying than an odd-couple pairing. Oscar and Felix, Lucy and Ethel, Tom Wambsgans and Cousin Greg: if the tensions are plentiful, so are the laffs. In “Drive-Away Dolls,” the new caper from the married couple Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke, we have Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), two […]
