“It’s the Old Thoreau Tradition”
This morning I was reading a 1972 interview with poet Allen Ginsberg and came across the following exchange… YLP: I was surprised to see the importance young Americans grant now to the Do It Yourself…
Category: World Literature
Two Ways of Looking at a Plague…
Ernesto Cardenal, Zero Hour And Other Documentary Poems New Directions, 1980 Dear Chase & Liz, The Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal died on March 1. I’m going back over his works this spring under quarantine. I…
A Meditation on History by Vasily Grossman
Can we call someone a great man if he has not brought into people’s lives a single atom of good, a single atom of freedom and intelligence? Can we call someone a great man if…
The Path of Sympathy in a Time of Plague
Tarrou was swinging his leg, tapping he terrace lightly with his heel, as he concluded. After a short silence the doctor raised himself a little in his chair and asked if Tarrou had an idea…
Real Butchers
Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murat Translators, Pevear and Volokhonsky I should read this short novel every year, in January. This time I read it thinking of Vietnam, the American occupiers (Russians), the indigenous resistance (Chechens), and…
There and Then, Here and Now
A lady: Yes, that’s just like what goes on nowadays, and it’s because anyone that is struggling for the liberation of the oppressed, he himself is a Christ, and then here’s a Herod, and what…
Cultivating Attention and Animating Conscience: Reading Thoreau in Desperate Times
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I…
Share the Wealth with Jack Renard: Reflections on a Life in Islamic Studies
This sharing will revolve around questions I get frequently: Whatever led you to choose this as an academic specialization? Why does Islamic religious studies matter? What do Islamic religious studies specialists actually study, and what…
The Russians
It should come as no surprise that black folks would immerse themselves in this Russian literary tradition that is so profound in its willingness to raise unsettling questions. They say when you go into James…
“Action Needed, Goethean Action”
Allen Ginsberg, Journals: Mid-Fifties 1954-1958, edited by Gordon Ball During winter and spring of 1996 I went on a binge of poet Allen Ginsberg’s books: poems, letters, photos, journals (I was taking a break from…