A close examination of the wilderness icon’s early travels reveal a deep love for trees, and some ugly feelings about people.
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Is W.B. Yeats’s ‘The Second Coming’ the Most Pillaged Piece of Literature in the English Language?
[W.B. Yeats’s 1919 poem] “The Second Coming” may well be the most thoroughly pillaged piece of literature in English. (Perhaps Macbeth’s famous “sound and fury” monologue is a distant second.) Since Chinua Achebe cribbed Yeats’s lines for Things Fall Apart in 1958 and Joan Didion for Slouching Towards Bethlehem a decade later, dozens if not hundreds of others have followed suit, […]
Posted inQuotes
The Selfies of Poets
At LitHub, Kate Durbin presents several dozen selfies–not her own, but those of contemporary poets, like Eileen Myles, Luna Miguel and Dodie Bellamy.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Teachings
On poetry and dying: Win Bassett reflects on a summer spent working as a hospital chaplain.
Posted inBooks, Reading List
Longreads Best of 2015: Under-Recognized Books
Books that deserved more attention in 2015.
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews
Mark Haddon: ‘Ultimately, There Is No Narrative Without Death’
An conversation with the author about his dark new short story collection, The Pier Falls.
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List, Top 5
Longreads Best of 2015: Here Are All of Our No. 1 Story Picks from This Year
All through December, we’ll be featuring Longreads’ Best of 2015. To get you ready, here’s a list of every story that was chosen as No. 1 in our weekly Top 5 email.
Papers
The Man in a Shell Sarah Miller This story, the first in Chekhov’s little trilogy, is a story within a story — all the stories in the trilogy follow this format — about a teacher named Burkin and a veterinarian named Ivan Ivanych who stop and spend the night at the home of a friend […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
A Black Woman’s Body on the Tennis Court: Claudia Rankine on Serena Williams
What does a victorious or defeated black woman’s body in a historically white space look like? Serena and her big sister Venus Williams brought to mind Zora Neale Hurston’s “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” This appropriated line, stenciled on canvas by Glenn Ligon, who used plastic letter […]
