Issue 4 | November-December 2009
Dribbles, Drabbles, Micro- & Flash (Oh my)
Frances Theodora Parsons’ How to Know the Wild Flowers—written under the pseudonym Mrs. William Star Dana, published in 1893, and acknowledged as the first true “field guide”—begins with a brief section…
From the Encyclopedic to the Personal
On December 10, 1982, Gabriel García Márquez received the Nobel Prize for Literature. In his new biography of the renowned Columbian writer, Gerald Martin describes the occasion: Now, defiantly dressed…
“A Congealed Nebulosity”
Reading Geoffrey Hill’s Collected Critical Writings feels a lot like what it might to step into a graduate seminar in 19th and 20th century poetry without having taken the prerequisite courses, or…
Enmeshed in War: Evelio Rosero’s The Armies
Colombia is almost certainly among the most difficult places on Earth for an outsider to understand. For forty years, the country has been embroiled in a civil war that pits…
The Transformation of Roses
It is tempting, as William H. Gass writes in Reading Rilke (Basic Books), to organize Rainer Maria Rilke’s life story around the several themes that obsessed and stalked him, particularly the image…