Robert Pinsky on Sylvia Plath: “Thrashing, hyperactive, perpetually accelerated, the poems of Sylvia Plath catch the feeling of a profligate, hurt imagination, throwing off images and phrases with the energy of a runaway horse or a machine with its throttle stuck wide open.”
Literary
E.T.A. Hoffmann: The Soul’s Adventure on New Year’s Eve
E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Literary Gothic: Every New Year’s Eve the Devil keeps a special treat for me. He knows just the right moment to jam his claw into my heart, keeping up a fine mockery while he licks the blood that wells out.
Emily Dickinson: A Mystic of Stillness Who Mocked Heaven
Emily Dickinson was a great poet whose life has remained a mystery. The time has come to dispel the myth of a quaint and helpless creature, disappointed in love, who gave up on life. Unafraid of her own passions and talent, she embraced the world around her, yet faced a debilitating illness and family intrigue.
Nikolai Gogol: Magical Ukrainian Fairy Tale on Christmas Eve
Devilry and mischief pervades a cold winter holiday night in Nikolai Gogol’s magical ode called The Night Before Christmas. A dark entity absconds with the moon hidden in his pocket. Thereafter, he roams around tormenting people as he pleases.
Matt Pallamary: Guaraní Shaman’s Quest for “Land Without Evil”
Matthew Pallamary’s acclaimed novel “Land Without Evil,” recently performed as an aerial acrobatic stage show, narrates the true story of a young shaman of the Guaraní people of South America facing European conquest and conversion to Catholicism in the 1700s.
Space Exploration: Ray Bradbury and the Mission to the Red Planet
“The Martians were there—in the canal—reflected in the water…. The Martians stared back up at them for a long, long silent time from the rippling water….” –Ray Bradbury, “The Martian Chronicles”
Dirty Realism: The Anti-Social Satire of Charles Bukowski
I go outside – and all up and down the street – the green armies shoot color – like an everlasting 4th of July, – and I too seem to swell inside, – a kind of unknown bursting, – a feeling, perhaps, that there isn’t any – enemy – anywhere