Essays

The reality of Bolaño’s outlaw image, The Daily Beast gets into books, the Google books settlement’s collapse, Bill Murray’s support of poetry, and more.

At first, there was nothing to do but watch.
For days, before the trucks arrived, before the work
of clean-up, my brother sat on the stoop and watched.

Here is North Gulfport—
its liquor stores and car washes,

The house is in need of repair, but is—
for now, she says—still hers. After the storm,
she laid hands on what she could reclaim:

Somewhere in the post-Katrina wreckage and disarray of my grandmother’s house, there is a photograph of my brother Joe and me, our arms around each other’s shoulders. We are at a long-gone nightclub in Gulfport, the Terrace Lounge, standing...

On Saturday, when I come to see
my brother, they call him, over loudspeaker,
to the tower—a small guardroom

The water clock makes into a measure
a flow so continuous none can say

I should like Kennedy, there’s something about walking past a display lined with copies of True Compass that strikes a sour chord.

They’ve passed on naming the controversial Farouk Hosni as their new director general, choosing Bulgarian Irina Gueorguieva Bokova.

The great anthropological cookbooks of the 1960s and 1970s have been all but replaced by the fluffy side-projects of TV personalities, further alienating home cooks from their kitchens.