I used to see Arthur Firstenberg on Saturday morning at the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market, walking alone; I never saw anyone speak to him and the casual gossip I picked up was that he was a nut of some kind, preaching a gospel nobody wanted to hear.
Celebrating a Master
“Master” is what John Cheever (1912-1982) was, and is, although largely forgotten now in spite of the acclaim and the many awards he accumulated during his long career as a successful novelist and short story writer.
Mary Oliver Is Dead
Her gift seems simple and yet it is neither simple nor common but the “confiding intimacy” of her great poems.
Will Walking Away
What is it about our world that destroys our young men?
Andrea
The great advantage we are gaining from enduring this age of suppression—internal and external—is that there are no unimportant words, no expression in a medium that is not political.
Remembering Nora Ephron
A lot of us are feeling a sense of loss on hearing that Nora Ephron is dead at 71-not because we knew her, saw her movies or read all her writing-but because she came to represent something hard to define about an era that began with the first issue of Ms. in 1973 when Ephron was what was called a “mail girl” at Esquire.
Adrienne Rich Is Dead
In my heart, she has a special place because of some curious connections: she was at Radcliffe a few years before me, in the wretched fifties, and came out of that experience with formal training, an early marriage, and three sons.