To Be a Poet, Open Your Eyes
An homage to William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams is often sidelined as a poet’s poet for modernist snobs. In fact, he was a social poet whose democratic art was for the people.
All Back Pages
In the Domain of the Unknown
From death mask to CPR manikin, L'Inconnue de la Seine is a mythic symbol of our attempts to grapple with death - or reverse it.
A drowned Victorian teen, her medical manikin doppelganger, and their enduring entanglement with the question: “Can death be undone?”
Our Neighbor From Hell
"May December" asks hard questions about what a community does with its monsters
Our critic watches a new indie drama about the long shadow cast by an act of child abuse.
Love in the Age of Cronenberg
Only now is the world ready for the queer, kinky idea of love in David Cronenberg's films
Cronenberg has long been the king of body horror. But is his odd vision of the "new flesh" really a prophecy of queer, sexually liberated Zoomers?
Egypt’s Season of Starlets
In the 1940s and 1950s, all of Egypt was transfixed by the divas of its rising film and radio industries
These are the stories – full of heartache and business intrigue – of the starlets who captured Egypt's heart as it entered the age of mass media.
The Former Essayist
On the decline of Wesley Yang
Whatever happened to Wesley Yang?
From Issue 3
Great minds are not like ordinary people; theydo not wash socks or remember birthdays.They see clear through one aspect of the world, socks and all. The aspect furls and stretches like a catbaked in sunlight. Or molten glasspulled like hot caramel in cool stone hands. I have known three Great...
A Specter Hangs Over the Hamptons Couch
Inside the Outsider Art fair
On perusing the obscene spectacle of the Outsider Art Fair, a communist declares: abolish the art market!
Genesis
A short story
“But you’re still alive ain’t ya?” A story of North Carolina.
