Featured, Nexus »

A “Grand Tour” Through the Pyrenees Connects Artists and Audiences on a Cultural Pilgrimage

By | June 22, 2017

It must not be imagined that a walking tour, as some would have us fancy, is merely a better or worse way of seeing the country. There are many ways of seeing landscape quite as good; and none more vivid, in spite of canting dilettantes, than from a railway train. But landscape on a walking tour is quite accessory. He who is indeed of the …

Featured, What It Means to Be American »

How Lafayette Became America’s “Favorite Fighting Frenchman”

By | June 22, 2017

If you live in the United States, you’ve probably come across a county, city, street, park, school, shop, or restaurant named for Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834), the most beloved French hero of the American Revolution. In New York City, my home town, I’ve spotted three different Lafayette Avenues, one Lafayette Street, a Lafayette playground, and four public sculptures of the Marquis. Although …

Featured, Nexus »

Historian Kevin Starr Was an Affectionate Connoisseur of California’s Contradictions

By | June 16, 2017

California has had many chroniclers — some critics, some boosters, some cheerleaders, some dour polemicists. It’s only natural that a vast state defined by its extremes—political, geological, economic, and otherwise—would rarely be portrayed from the center.
But one of the paradoxes of the Golden State is that the greatest historian of California, someone who absorbed the writing of previous scholars and scribes, found a way to …

Featured, Poetry »

for us the moment was perfect #poem

By | June 16, 2017

Although not for whatever lay dead in the adjacent meadow,
for us the moment was perfect—the sky, sky blue, the sun
burnishing the fresh-washed foliage, the dog, sticks retrieved,
content to lie within reach of a scratch, and the narrative permitting
us a bench and a view of what lay before us: the light green nap
of grass like a billiard table’s baize cloth, turkey vultures cruising
on the thermals in …

Featured, Nexus »

California’s Single Payer Health Care Bill Is Dead on Arrival

By | June 9, 2017

I am a lifelong Democrat who has been working hard for more than a decade to improve the policies and build the coalitions necessary for the success of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. I believe the ACA didn’t go far enough and that the United States must do more to guarantee universal and affordable health coverage. My preference would be for America to …

Featured, Poetry »

give me your hammer #poem

By | June 9, 2017

don’t leave me to
paginate the Ozarks
alone with a grid
that cramps my
Byronic manner
give me your hammer
so i can stake my
tent hard into these
innumerable stars
 
Nathan Spoon’s publications include Oxford Poetry, Mantis, Reflections (Yale Divinity School) and the anthology What Have You Lost? (HarperCollins). He is associate editor of X-Peri and a 2017 faculty member for the Modernist Social Network seminar series at the University …

Featured, What It Means to Be American »

With Crocheting Needles, My Sicilian Immigrant Grandmother Wove a New Life In America

By | June 8, 2017

The winter rains had subsided for the moment, but the coastal night air remained chilly and damp. My rent-controlled apartment, with its lack of insulation, mirrored the outside evening temperature, as I sat at my desk struggling to meet a self-imposed deadline. Shoes aren’t allowed in my home, not even for me, and with porous window seals in this old building and its wooden floors, …

Featured, Poetry »

I had never been terrified before you #poem

By | June 2, 2017

 
Kathryn Merwin is a native of Washington, D.C. pursuing her MFA through Western Washington University. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Blackbird, Natural Bridge, Prairie Schooner, and Sugar House Review, among others.

Connecting California, Featured, Joe Mathews »

L.A.’s New State Historic Park Is Both a Miracle and a Missed Opportunity

By | May 30, 2017

Riddle: When is a miracle also bound to be a disappointment?
Answer: When the miracle is a project of the state of California.
A case in point is the recent opening of the Los Angeles State Historic Park, an event that contains many miracles.
Miracle one: It’s a large (32 acres) park—with broad grassy fields large enough to fly a kite or hold a big concert, …

Featured, Poetry »

Now things are getting complicated #poem

By | May 26, 2017

Now things are getting complicated. The roots that connect my stories to the inside, the fleshy roots
at the underside of the stories, topography of land and sea and love sending sound and body from
the underside, the roots reaching to the inside
are winding and thinning as they enter, towards a center
trying to foul things up; where the threads meet is thrashing:
Minotaur again, shapeshifting or some shit.

The …

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