A Summary and Analysis of Amanda Gorman’s ‘We Rise’
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Amanda Gorman’s poem ‘We Rise’ is an inspiring piece celebrating female empowerment and solidarity which calls upon women to support each other to bring about social change. The poem also cleverly summons the work of earlier poets who had written on the same topic. Summary Gorman begins the poem […]
A Modern California Dream, Still Haunted by Hippie Darkness
Credit…Robert Beatty THORN TREE, by Max Ludington For every idyllic image of the 1960s there exists its dark inverse, a symbol of menacing chaos. Give me your flower crowns at Woodstock, your free love in Haight-Ashbury, and I’ll hand you the murdering Manson family, or the 5-year-old in Joan Didion’s “Slouching Toward Bethlehem,” high on […]
A Summary and Analysis of Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Sestina’
‘Sestina’ is a poem by the twentieth-century American poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-79), first published in the New Yorker in 1956. The poem, which uses a very specific verse form, describes a grandmother and a child as they sit in a kitchen together, with a mysterious and unspecific air of grief or sadness haunting them both. […]
Making Memory Under Capitalism
Photo by nichiiro on Unsplash A performance artist, a coder, and community activist walk into one another’s lives. Rather, they meet as children at a Fourth of July barbecue for Chinese immigrant families. What unfolds in Lisa Ko’s Memory Piece is how their friendship evolves, as they wrestle with their individual ambitions and collective social […]
John Barth, a Novelist Who Found Possibility in a ‘Used-Up’ Form
John Barth was a pioneer of literary postmodernism.Credit…Bettmann/Getty Nobody likes the comic who explains his own material, but the writer John Barth, who died on Tuesday, had a way of making explanations — of gags, of stories, of the whole creative enterprise — sing louder and funnier and truer than punchlines. The maxim “Show, don’t […]
A Continent of Living Spirits: 6 Ghost Stories From Across Latin America
When my Abuela died in early 2021, I couldn’t say goodbye to her in person. The day that she died, I felt her at the end of my bed. I was twisted in guilt. I was asleep, but it was a flimsy sleep, not deep. She was laughing at me. “What are you crying for? […]
A.I. Chatbot, Will You Be My Friend? Seven Stories of Robot-Human Relationships
Smart robots have populated fiction for generations, but now with artificial intelligence exploding around us, we’re seeing more titles than ever that grapple with this technology. In the following novels and stories, authors delve into personal relationships between humans and A.I. consciousnesses that may or may not inhabit bodies. Themes of loneliness, love, personhood, and […]
Exclusive Cover Reveal of “Book of Kin” by Darius Atefat-Peckham
Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover for the poetry collection Book of Kin by Darius Atefat-Peckham, which will be published by Autumn House Press on Oct. 25, 2024. Preorder the book here . A debut collection that draws on the poet’s Iranian heritage to process life-altering loss and grief. Darius Atefat-Peckham’s debut poetry […]
‘The Idea of You’ soundtrack producer says he wasn’t thinking about One Direction while writing music for August Moon
Entertainment ‘The Idea of You’ soundtrack producer says he wasn’t thinking about One Direction while writing music for August Moon Facebook Email Twitter LinkedIn Copy Link Read in app Paul Bergen/Redferns, Alisha Wetherill/Prime, Dave Pedley/Getty, Tyler Le/BI Savan Kotecha is the lead songwriter and producer behind “The Idea of You” soundtrack. The movie features a […]
Welcome to the London Book Fair, Where Everyone Knows Their Place
The London Book Fair was held over three days in the cavernous Kensington Olympia exhibition center.Credit…Sam Bush for The New York Times Everybody knows that the publishing industry is a rigorously stratified world, characterized by a reverence for hierarchy and a near-fanatical observance of ritual. Or maybe we suspect as much — but for those […]