Recent Reading
Sunday 11 April 2021 Dear Sarah, Thanks for your question about what I’ve been reading. Sometimes I make a plan, then other times I act entirely on instinct. So what follows are examples of each….
Category: Vietnam
Roses and Garbage
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart SutraParallax Press, 1988 A beautiful rose we have just cut and placed in our vase is immaculate. It smells so good, so pure,…
The Good News of Translation
1. Thanks to __________, I Was Able to Read_______’s _________ [Language] Richard Fein, Yankev Glatshteyn, Selected Poems [Yiddish] Hillel Halkin, Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman [Yiddish] Nili Wachtel, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Meshugah [Yiddish] Martha…
Vietnamerica
1967 Today’s Email: “Thank you for signing up for the [New York Times] Vietnam ’67 newsletter. Over the course of the next year, we’ll examine the participation of the United States in the long war…
Citizens
A Singer In 1969 or 1970, I began to re-evaluate my whole concept of what I wanted my music to say…. I was very much affected by letters my brother was sending me from Vietnam,…
Wartime during Life/3
We Expect the Germans To know their own historyTo tell the truth about their warTo refuse rationalizations and excusesTo act responsibly here and nowHowever many decadesAgo that was The world expects the AmericansTo know their…
Compañeras
I needed to find other women who knew what I knew, and more. I needed to talk to women who had seen unspeakable things, who were without self-pity, who had faced the liars and lunatics,…
Wartime during Life/2
November 12, 2007. Smithfield, NC. After Reading Levertov’s Poem on the 1972 Christmas Bombing for Andrew Wimmer and Suzanne Renard Haven’t you had a similar fantasySure, a different decadeA different civilization now being destroyedDifferent…
Mentshes/3
What You Understand Depends on Where You Stand For Brent Fernandez and Brett Schrewe Night Flight to Hanoi is an account of Jesuit Daniel Berrigan’s odyssey in late January and early February 1968, when…