Back in the mid-eighties, for those of us who studied the dark arts of ninja theory in the Parisian dojos of Derrida and Deleuze, S/Z by Roland Barthes was a seminal scripture. One of many keys it offered was its lesson that books don’t have to read from beginning to end—that, instead, . . .
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By naming her collection Civil Twilight, Cynthia Huntington situates us in a narrow interval—the few minutes when the sun hovers zero to six degrees below the horizon. Any higher and it’s daytime. One degree lower is twilight of a different kind. Concerned as it is with precision, however, Huntington’s title also creates . . .
Read MoreA Review of Salt House by Hazel Hawthorne An early twentieth-century literary darling of the Outer Cape (and a descendent of Nathaniel Hawthorne), Hazel Hawthorne and her second husband, Morris S. Werner, spent many years living and working between New York and Provincetown. From the back cover of her 1934 novel Salt . . .
Read MoreFruit cannot dropthrough this thick air—H.D. Whether Celsius or Centigrade,It’s damned hot in these late summer days!Yet you’ll cool (even smile)When you drink dog days style.Here are beers that provide liquid shade. 1You’ll keep cool with this wintry White Beard,A translucent white ale to keep near.Beat the heat (and repeat)With this lemony . . .
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When she was 28, Jessica Slice quite literally stumbled into disability while on a hike in Greece with her then-husband. Tired and hot after an hour-long trek, they turned a corner and were confronted by a pack of wild dogs. Though they managed to avoid attack by backing away and scrambling up . . .
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A Review of On the Way to the Paintings of Forest Robberies by Jennifer Nelson “Surrect” has been used twice in English. Once in 1692 by Leonard Plukenet, the English botanist, in a letter to John Ray, also a botanist, comparing Polygonum minus candicans supinum to Paronychia hispanica. (“Which is a more . . .
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“I think it’s time to question what we ask of authors, particularly new authors, in exchange forpaying attention to them,” Portalmania author Debbie Urbanski wrote in a recent LitHub article,raising important questions about personal boundaries in the context of book marketing, thaticky blood ritual of churning out social media posts, podcast interviews . . .
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And malt does more than Milton canTo justify God’s ways to man. –A. E. Housman There are Porters and Stouts; there are Browns.(And these beer styles are rightly renowned.)Though I’ve tried quite a few,I’ve sought differently brewedTypes of malty. Come taste what I’ve found. And before it gets sultry outside,while a vestige . . .
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Across twelve chapters, Beliso-De Jesús presents the history of medicalized state-sanctioned violence via excited delirium syndrome through a compelling combination of historiography, ethnography, and memoir. Peppered throughout the text are the author’s personal stories and interactions, which help contextualize the far-reaching implications of the diagnosis and her positionality as an Afro-Latiné woman and scholar researching the spectrum of Black and Brown death within the U.S. carceral system.
Read MoreIs anything the matter? Drawings by Laylah Ali University Museum of Contemporary Art, University of Massachusetts Amherst February 14 to May 9, 2025 As I stepped into the main gallery of the University Museum of Contemporary Art (UMCA), I was confronted with the question—Is anything the matter?—splayed across the entry wall. Instinctively, . . .
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