For a couple of years during my twenties I carried a certain book with me nearly everywhere I went: The Orphic Voice by Elizabeth Sewell. I have no idea how I came to have it (I am an inveterate browser and believer in the serendipity of bookstores, especially sprawling used bookstores, and even then I […]
This poem, along with visual art by Lisa Sette, is the latest offering from Broadsided Press. (See links.) The Car Covenant O give us individual mobility and daily we will embrace death.Give us miles to the gallon and things made small by moving swiftly away.We will sacrifice certain teenagers to the oak tree. Make the […]
My friend the poet Mario Noel Rodriguez of El Salvador sent me the following statement, signed by many of Colombia’s writers, artists, and intellectuals, addressing the intractable bloody civil war there. I have brought it over into English as best I could, but I include the original also for those who can read Spanish. For […]
Eduardo Galeano Uruguayan essayist, journalist and historian. Galeano’s best-known works include the trilogy Memoria del fuego (1982-1986, Memory of Fire) and Las venas abiertas de América Latina (1971, The Open Veins of Latin America), which have been translated into some 20 languages. Galeano’s work transcends orthodox genres, and combines documentary, fiction, journalism, political analysis, and […]
More Herbert
Among the poems of Herbert I want to include here is this one, “Elegy for the Departure of Pen Ink and Lamp” which has at least the minor virtue of irony, given the fact that I am “blogging” it; on the other hand, maybe that fact belies the “dark” of Herbert’s ending. Here’s the poem: […]
THE PEBBLE by Zbigniew Herbert The pebble is a perfect creature equal to itself mindful of its limits filled exactly with a pebbly meaning with a scent that does not remind one of anything does not frighten anything away does not arouse desire its ardour and coldness are just and full of dignity I feel […]
Some time ago I wrote this short essay explicating what must be one of the most incisive critiques of patriarchal power ever offered in a single poem, Linda McCarriston’s “Le Coursier de Jeanne D’Arc,” from her second book, EVA-MARY, nominated for the National Book Award in 1993. I reprint the poem here, followed by my […]
HAPPY MAY DAY! Reprinted from an essay by Neal Towart, found at http://www.mayweek.ab.ca/archives/2003/history.html May Day Connections May Day as a modern working class celebration and commemoration began from the 1886 events in Chicago where workers were demonstrating for an eight hour day. But the day already had special significance for working people before then. PreIndustrial […]
Another of those odd things I’ll never publish elsewhere, so what the hell… THE END OF TIME: A SHORT PLAY Scene 1: (Idyllic setting: a family is picnicking on the grass.) ENTER Chicken Little (running): The sky is falling! The sky is falling! (Confusion. Alarm.) EXEUNT ALL Scene 2: (A publisher’s office.) Writer: So, if […]
RICHARD HOFFMAN 
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