Aristotle believed the eel was spontaneously generated from the guts of wet soil. It is not. First its stomach dissolves and then it migrates 6000 km back to its spawning grounds. Catadromous: down-running, it lives in fresh water estuaries, but is born, breeds, and dies in the sea. I […]
The poems of Naomi Edwards are rooted in an awareness of loss and experience of a tenderness that has persevered. The images emerge with a pared down texture and rhythmic scaffolding, thoughtful but without fuss, like the loosely bound threads of a cloth laid over a frame. They […]
Aletheia is a Greek word often translated as ‘truth’, ‘unforgetting’, ‘unconcealedness.’ While in modern greek, it is used to confirm or express agreement, as in its rueful English parallels, ‘so true’ or ‘really?’, its etymological source is layered and elusive: combining the privative «A» (un-) with «lethe», a […]
Stesichorus, a Sicilian Greek who wrote sweet, extravagant poetry is most known for his palinode: That story is not true: you did not go on the well-benched ships, nor did you reach Troy’s citadel. (fr. 192, trans. Miller) According to Plato, he composed this after losing his […]
I recently returned from Athens, Greece—a place I encountered first as a student ten years ago, then five years later with a lover, and this time to stay with a friend. Wandering back through strangely familiar streets, I thought of Odysseus just before he reaches the island of […]
The three facets of the great writer — magic, story, lesson — are prone to blend in one impression of unified and unique radiance, since the magic of art may be present in the very bones of the story, in the very marrow of thought. –V. Nabokov Poet […]
I feel as saucy as ever—not only because I am independent but because I have gained complete triumph...ah how sweet is revenge.—Catherine Greene Miller Twisting oaks, feral horses, spiny saw palms, coasts rich with turtles’ nests and the grand ruins of Carnegies: part national seashore, part private property, […]
On January 9th of this year the poet and activist Imamu Amiri Baraka (previously LeRoy Jones) died. It would be impossible to describe his works and their importance here—not just because of their quantity but also because of their incredible range. In early life a beatnik, in middle […]
