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Writers

Once More unto the Bard: Shakespeare and War

From The Literary Review (UK): Oleksii Hnatkovskyi stands alone as Hamlet, spotlit and swathed in blue and yellow. The scene is from a Ukrainian-­language production of Hamlet, directed by Rostyslav Derzypilskyi, performed in the basement-turned-shelter of the Ivan Franko Theatre in Kyiv on the sixteenth day after Russia’s invasion. One week earlier, in his address…

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Vows: Marriage, Love and Commitment

From The Wall Street Journal: Somewhere around 1549, an English priest introduced love into marriage. Sort of. Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury during Henry VIII’s break with Rome, was the author and compiler of the English Book of Common Prayer, whose marriage rite—containing that familiar “love, cherishe, and to obey” and “til death us…

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Majeeda Officially Releases Pandemic Project

Poems like these flow as a result of a global quarantine. While the world was under lockdown, and we were all told we were safer at home, Majeeda was churning out poems and recording them in her closet. The outcome is her latest album, “Wedding Invitation” – a blend of spoken word poetry, music, and dramatic…

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The Mongol Hordes: They’re Just Like Us

From The New Yorker: On September, Pope Francis became the first leader of the Catholic Church ever to visit Mongolia. It must have been a humbling stopover. The country has fewer than fifteen hundred Catholics. The welcoming ceremony, in Ulaanbaatar’s main square, attracted a few hundred spectators—a crowd less than a thousandth the size of…

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Yes, People Still Buy Books

From Slate: Last week the article “No One Buys Books,” by Elle Griffin, went viral, topping Substack categories and being shared widely on social media. It’s easy to understand why. Publishing is an opaque industry, and Griffin’s piece—which collects quotes and statistics from the 2022 Justice Department suit against Penguin Random House, in which the…

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What Was Hanun’s Big Mistake?

To each his suff’rings: all are men,          Condemn’d alike to groan, The tender for another’s pain;          Th’ unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate? Since sorrow never comes too late,          And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy…

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Sad Poetry: The Lies We Believe

 time’s ambition wears our torn sleeves. no names left to give. to the cowards and the antonyms.   all our sinking parapets tremble under tomorrow’s astringent gaze.  crippled tongues choke on stray words.  our skin’s missing buttons leave us exposed.  to the…source