Literature
Once there was a man who was tired of breathing. It’s just such a drag, he said. So he decided to stop, but found that he couldn’t—the air just kept going in and out.
A new look at the Black Mountain poets.
The writer on her new novel, why style is political, and the kinds of subjectivity we experience.
A post-apocalyptic story about a sea captain who parents alongside a penguin at the arctic center.
I cannot feel my cat’s fur / with my left hand. / Of course / I also cannot feel / my children. with my left / hand. Their throats. I cannot / feel my own body, the soft / candle wax of it. I cannot go where / I used to.
The poet’s new collection of essays, Minor Feelings, threads intense friendships, “bad” English, and standup comedy into a meditation on the Asian-American experience.
On Erik Davis’s High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies
My second job was waiting in a window / behind the window of the job I was on // the clock for. My third job was scheduled / for that evening, but not yet // confirmed. My fourth freelance job wasn’t active / per se, but I was actively // pursuing clients.
With contributions from Ottessa Moshfegh, Carl Phillips, Lidia Yuknavitch, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, and more.
The writers on indigenous ancestry, playing with language, and maintaining public personas.
Maybe // There is // A genealogy of suffering // How // This morning // I read // Minimalism is the aesthetic code of gentrification // Really I want to say // Make less art
On the 1973 feminist publication that gathered collective and self-help resources into one big, beautiful book.
The writer on using Chaucer’s Middle English to channel transgressive figures, rethink gender, and experience the pleasures of language.
All loves—and all selves—are fictions. Though that doesn’t mean they aren’t true.
A variety of texts by a writer who fancied himself a power broker.
The late poet on his artistic influences, leftist politics, and reading to anarcho-punks.
A public cafeteria, the ghost of my heart gorges herself on spent ammunition // The Orlando medical examiner processed each of the 49 Pulse victims apart from the gunman. / Even amid gravitational collapse, surviving atoms couldn’t reanimate with him.
The Man Booker finalist on telling a story from the perspective of a spirit and writing to expose historical truths.
On Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That Held Them, a witty and subversive novel about life in a fourteenth century convent.
The writer and musician on queer representation, empathy for our younger selves, and music for our feelings.
