PolyArchive

Tom Vanderbilt | Slate: The Single Most Important Object in the Global Economy. The pallet. Cindy Lamothe | The Atlantic: When Kids Have to Act Like Parents, It Affects Them for Life. Some people who have to be responsible for their siblings or parents as children grow up to be compulsive caretakers. Christer Petley | […]

Olga Khazan | The Atlantic: We Expect Too Much From Our Romantic Partners. A new book explores how marriage has changed in recent years, and why that’s made staying married harder. Stuart Firestein | Nautilus: How Pseudoscientists Get Away With It. “They imitate the ways in which science works and make claims as if they […]

Catherine Caruso | Scientific American: Don’t Forget: You, Too, Can Acquire a Super Memory. Learning a memorization technique used by elite memory athletes leads to widespread changes in brain wiring. Amber Rae | Fast Company: How To Schedule Your Day For Peak Creative Performance. Elizabeth Winkler | The Atlantic: Was Shakespeare a Woman? The authorship […]

Links of the week… maybe not every week, but this week! Dave Weinstein | Eichler Network: When Joe Eichler Spoke Out About Race. He made good on his threat to resign from the San Francisco NAHB over their resistance to abolish discriminatory policies. Gillian Osborne | Boston Review: Herman Melville the Poet. The author of […]

La Figlia che Piange T. S. Eliot            O quam te memorem virgo Stand on the highest pavement of the stair— Lean on a garden urn— Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair— Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise— Fling them to the ground and turn With a fugitive resentment in your […]

Individuals can be alienated from themselves only because there is something in them to alienate. The terrain of this violation is their authentic existence. Living the truth is thus woven directly into the texture of living a lie. It is the repressed alternative, the authentic aim to which living a lie is an inauthentic response. […]

Allegro Tomas Tranströmer Translated by Robin Fulton I play Haydn after a black day and feel a simple warmth in my hands. The keys are willing. Soft hammers strike. The resonance green, lively and calm. The music says freedom exists and someone doesn’t pay the emperor tax. I push down my hands in my Haydnpockets […]

Yale Needs Women: How the First Group of Girls Rewrote the Rules of an Ivy League Giant Ann Gardiner Perkins Sourcebooks, 2019 Writing for an academic audience (such as in a dissertation) is totally different from how stories are told in popular non-fiction, so it is rare when an author can turn academic research into […]

I like these kinds of lists on other sites and newsletters, so why not give it a go? Judith Humphrey | Fast Company: Six Verbs That Make You Sound Weak (No Matter Your Job Title). I’m guilty of oh, 5 of out the 6. Olivia B. Waxman | Time: What Caused the Stock Market Crash […]

Native Trees W. S. Merwin Neither my father nor my mother knew the names of the trees where I was born what is that I asked and my father and mother did not hear they did not look where I pointed surfaces of furniture held the attention of their fingers and across the room they […]

We Have Not Long To Love Tennessee Williams We have not long to love. Light does not stay. The tender things are those we fold away. Coarse fabrics are the ones for common wear. In silence I have watched you comb your hair. Intimate the silence, dim and warm. I could but did not, reach […]

In Love with You Kenneth Koch                                                       I O what a physical effect it has on me To dive forever into the light blue sea Of your acquaintance! Ah, but dearest friends, Like forms, are finished, as life has ends! Still, It is beautiful, when October Is over, and February is over, To sit in the […]

The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: “Workers of the world, unite!” Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so […]

Skunk Hour Robert Lowell Nautilus Island’s hermit heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage; her sheep still graze above the sea. Her son’s a bishop. Her farmer is first selectman in our village; she’s in her dotage. Thirsting for the hierarchic privacy of Queen Victoria’s century, she buys up all the eyesores facing […]

One Girl Sappho Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti I Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough, Atop on the topmost twig, — which the pluckers forgot, somehow, — Forget it not, nay; but got it not, for none could get it till now. II Like the wild hyacinth flower which on the […]