Editor’s Note: First posted precisely one year ago, we can think of nothing more appropriate to revisit on this dark anniversary than Harry Harootunian’s chilling and incisive diagnosis of our world today. (Image: Ben Shahn, Walking Figures: circa 1960, silkscreen.) Abstract “A Fascism for Our Time” focuses on how the accidental convergence . . .
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Editor’s Note: On December 3, 2021, at the Old Chapel on the campus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, friends, colleagues, and community members met to celebrate the work of UMass Professor of English and MR Contributing Editor Martín Espada, to recognize his singular achievements—during his long career but also in a . . .
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Milkmen returned to their jobs. Sales of private jets and air purifiers went through the roof. There were shortages, but they were short-lived:coins, toilet paper, bleach.—from “Things I Forgot to Tell You about the End of the World,” Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces . . .
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A project by Alfredo Jaar (www.alfredojaar.net). Erri De Luca, Bird Song / Canto cinciallegra , translated by Jim Hicks (2021) Christmas came a couple of weeks early at our house. During the first week of December, I received an email from Alfredo Jaar, the Chilean-born artist and photographer, recipient of Guggenheim and . . .
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(Part Three) In me also exists—as within any other citizen of a country where capitalism is unchallenged—a consumer self. This self for years now buys almost exclusively organic food, not only because he is careful not to poison himself any more that he has to, but also because he believes this is . . .
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(Part Two) Inside me, though, there is also a writerly self. This me is like a ferocious crocodile that fights to find food and freedom. He’s used to winning and often tears his adversaries to pieces in a single bite, so he’s a pretty fearsome beast. This writer/crocodile self argues that all . . .
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(Part One) Inside me there’s also a militant self. It first showed itself when I was very young; later it became more stealthy, like a spring with water that doesn’t rise to the surface, leaving the stream bed dry. Throughout my life he has always made an effort to keep current and . . .
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Inside me exists a self that years ago decided to study agronomy—where that idea came from exactly, who knows? Many aspects of our selves remain a mystery. For forty years this self did work in soil science, and, even at a time when few were talking about climate change, he always felt . . .
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‘Twas the midst of December: there came forth a cryFrom us beer drinkers wond’ring which brews we shall buyFor festivities, feasting, for sitting by fires.It’s the holidays! Taste all the good that transpires.‘Tis the time to be stocking your holiday shelfWith the richly full-flavored beers. (Move over, elf!) First Diwali and Hanukkah . . .
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My first real job: barmaid.I stood: I stared. I pouredcabernet: I dried expensivewine glasses with a chamois cloth—from “Psalm,” Volume 61, Issue 3 (Fall 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.I made my first chapbook when I was five, with colored construction paper and yarn: a short allegorical . . .
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