Life expectancy.

W. S. Merwin, 1999. From Migration: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon, 2005).

Hey man is everything OK? I noticed your falcon doesn't seem to be able to hear you

Becky Burke of Book Island (a picture book publisher in the UK founded by my fellow Tokarczuk translator Greet Pauwelijn) was "detained" by ICE at the Canadian border on 2/28. Her father asked that her story be shared in case someone can help her. He writes:

Free Mahmoud Khalil

"My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against . many people precluded from the protections of the law"

“Hugely, spring exists again.” — John Ashbery, from “Grand Galop”

the nostalgia is not for factory labor, it's for worker power.

“Something is well-written if, after some time, it strikes one as alien—one would be incapable of writing it that way a second time. Such an idea (expression) did not come from the fund that is available for daily expenditure.” — Robert Musil (Diaries, tr. Payne)

When you’ve lost The Atlantic.

Substack, a many-tentacled advertisement for the editing profession.

I’m sorry I just can’t humor this armchair protest punditry. You want to influence their strategy then pick up an American flag and hit the streets. Otherwise, if you ostensibly support their cause, just shut the fuck up and back them. You’re not a movement tactician.

It really is the same playbook they used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

When Tony Judt praised the miracle of America's great state schools, he thought first of all of IU Bloomington, where humanities programs are currently being blown to shreds

My NYT op-ed this morning I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It. nytimes.com/2025/07/15/opi… via @NYTOpinion

Okay, I'll give it a shot: Matewan Killer of Sheep Harlan County USA Dr. Strangelove Treasure of the Sierra Madre