PolyArchive

To Jane: The Invitation Percy Bysshe Shelley Best and brightest, come away! Fairer far than this fair Day, Which, like thee to those in sorrow, Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow To the rough Year just awake In its cradle on the brake. The Brightest hour of unborn Spring, Through the winter wandering, Found, it […]

Mosab Abu Toha’s Substack is among the most important documentation I’m reading these days. All eyes on Gaza and the West Bank.   I recently looked into ELVTR, trying to decide whether it was a scam, when I (unwisely) shared my contact info and was repeatedly contacted by a rep whose name I then Googled. […]

The Queen of Carthage Louise Glück Brutal to love, more brutal to die. And brutal beyond the reaches of justice to die of love. In the end, Dido summoned her ladies in waiting that they might see the harsh destiny inscribed for her by the Fates. She said, “Aeneas came to me over the shimmering […]

A Woman of Adventure: The Life and Times of First Lady Lou Henry Hoover Annette B. Dunlap University of Nebraska Press Description When Lou Henry married Herbert Hoover in February 1899, she looked forward to a partnership of equality and a life of adventure. She could fire a rifle and sit a horse as well […]

May-Day Ralph Waldo Emerson Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring, With sudden passion languishing, Maketh all things softly smile, Painteth pictures mile on mile, Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths, Whence a smokeless incense breathes. Girls are peeling the sweet willow, Poplar white, and Gilead-tree, And troops of boys Shouting with whoop and hilloa, And […]

Absence Matthew Arnold In this fair stranger’s eyes of grey Thine eyes, my love, I see. I shudder: for the passing day Had borne me far from thee. This is the curse of life: that not A nobler calmer train Of wiser thoughts and feelings blot Our passions from our brain; But each day brings […]

… Susan Sontag’s principal gifts to our civilization were not that easily packaged, but were a brilliant, non-stop commentary on contemporary art practices and their effects on our emotions. She did get off one sound bite in an interview on television, which was to me a stunning sermon in and of itself. She was asked […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

A Man Said to the Universe Stephen Crane A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.”  

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 […]

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 […]