Issue 37 | July-August 2015
For whom the trumpet sounds: on Laura Kasischke’s The Infinitesimals
“They are neither finite quantities nor quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them the ghosts of departed quantities?” This epigraph from George Berkeley’s The Analyst primes…
A heap of unidentifiable shards: on Vivian Gornick’s The Odd Woman and the City
It used to be that we offered one another the best versions of ourselves. Now we do our best to give the worst. I’m supremely flawed, we all recite in…
Truth and Beauty share a tomb: reflecting on 6 classic poems by women
1. “The Author To Her Book” by Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain, Who after birth didst by my side remain, Till snatched from thence by…
The independent seat: on Judith Barrington’s The Conversation
An “independent seat” is a rarely achieved height of equestrian skill, in which mechanical command and response are transformed into a fluid conversation between the bodies of horse and rider. It is…
The last Americans in Palmyra
The ruins of Palmyra. “All the sacred Mysteries of Asia, with their strident music, served now to add to this voluptuous unrest … I felt only disgust and abhorrence for all…