the archivist March 31, 2025

Follower Seamus Heaney My father worked with a horse-plough, His shoulders globed like a full sail strung Between the shafts and the furrow. The horse strained at his clicking tongue. An expert. He would set the wing And fit the bright steel-pointed sock. The sod rolled over without breaking. At the headrig, with a single […]

the archivist March 30, 2025

University Karl Shapiro To hurt the Negro and avoid the Jew Is the curriculum. In mid-September The entering boys, identified by hats, Wander in a maze of mannered brick Where boxwood and magnolia brood And columns with imperious stance Like rows of ante-bellum girls Eye them, outlanders. In whited cells, on lawns equipped for peace, […]

the archivist March 21, 2025

All You’re Ever Gonna Be Is Mean Mean comments are the worst. Closely related: people who give 1-star reviews or negative feedback because THEY thought they were buying a different item with a similar title and/or didn’t read the description before they bought an item or booked a service. Slinging a string of harsh words […]

the archivist March 20, 2025

Peel Brian Swann I read that in this famous person’s poems “she searches for signs of what lies beneath and beyond the self.” Which seemed to me pointless, as if you wouldn’t know whether to paint with egg tempera or eat it. At eighteen, I came across Tolstoy’s “What is Art?” where he said an […]

the archivist March 9, 2025

Good Things We’ve Seen on the Internet Lately How a Pop Band Tricked 9 Million Americans into Being Nazis Adam Tod Brown | Cracked.com Do you remember Ace of Base? I should tell you something: Ace of Base was probably a bunch of Nazis. https://www.cracked.com/blog/how-90s-pop-band-secretly-sold-nazism-to-america ———— Modern Love, Ancient War William Logan | The New […]

the archivist March 7, 2025

Excerpt from Red Fortress: History and Illusion in the Kremlin “[The area of modern-day Russia and Ukraine] seemed to be a dangerous, exotic place, where fortunes waited for adventurers. Human slaves were one source of profit, for while Muslims and Christians were forbidden to enslave each other, the pagan Slavs were fair game. The appetite […]

the archivist February 6, 2025

MrPorter.com: The Tribute: 10 Black Style Icons Who Changed British Menswear Words by Fedora Abu For as long as Black people have immigrated to the UK from its former colonies, Black culture has woven itself into the nation’s fabric. … British fashion is no different, although whether those contributions have been rightfully acknowledged is another […]

the archivist January 21, 2025

The Peace of Wild Things Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come […]

the archivist January 6, 2025

Top 9 Posts of 2024 Readers came here for many different posts during the year, but these were the most popular: The Poems of Our Climate | Wallace Stevens Dorothy Parker on New York: Autumn is the Springtime of big cities Introduction to Collected Poems (1938), E.E. Cummings You Want a Social Life, with Friends […]

the archivist January 3, 2025

Morning Song Sylvia Plath Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements. Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue. In a drafty museum, your nakedness Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls. I’m no more your […]

the archivist December 26, 2024

Failing and Flying Jack Gilbert (1925–2012) Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. It’s the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth doing is worth […]

the archivist November 27, 2024

Introduction to Wallace Stevens: A Poet of Imagination and Abstraction Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) occupies a revered place in American poetry, celebrated for his intricate use of language and his philosophical exploration of art, imagination, and reality. A master of modernist verse, Stevens seamlessly blended intellectual depth with musicality, crafting poems that challenge and reward readers […]

the archivist November 20, 2024

Never Give All the Heart William Butler Yeats Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that’s lovely is But a brief, dreamy, kind delight. O never give the […]

the archivist November 20, 2024

The Second Coming W.B. Yeats Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full […]