Jane Hirshfield, “I sat in the sun”
“Draw not nigh hither,” says the Lord to Moses; “put off thy shoes from off they feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground” (Exodus, 3, 5). There...
Author: ashok
Chase Twichell, “Animal Caution”
Memories of a certain significance entail grand gestures, rituals piled atop rituals. Every so often, Twichell climbs to a height where a cairn memorializing on...
Hannah VanderHart, “When Someone Says a Poem is Masterful”
Mastery, as VanderHart demonstrates, is an exceptionally cruel word. This did not need to be the case. However, hundreds of years of slavery and not nearly enou...
Socrates, Money, and Virtue: Apology of Socrates 30a-c
What I would like is success. I’d like to do a thing well, get something good, and feel secure about what I can accomplish. Maybe “success” is the wrong w...
Osip Mandelstam, “Suddenly in a light shawl”
Machiavelli testifies to “catching thrushes with my own hands” in the Letter to Vettori. “I would get up before daybreak, prepare the birdlime, and go out with…...