Articles

Katharine Blake on birth.

James Chapin on prison literature’s long moment—a review of books by Albert Woodfox, Tayari Jones, Zachary Lazar, Rachel Kushner, and Jackie Wang.

Laura Budofsky Wisniewski hears from her Bubbe’s ghost.

Hadara Bar-Nadav on praying at Jerusalem’s Western Wall.

The monument is essentially didactic: look on my works, ye mighty. But the ruin, the legless trunk, is often the real lesson, on the passing of time and the erosion of reputation.

This isn’t about objects, really. It’s about narratives of humanity, where objects are merely tropes for human experiences.

Cal Freeman on the mythological cockatrice, which kills with a glance.

Photographing helped me see the small light in this epic darkness, to find a conscientious perspective.

In Ibn Arabi, a totality of faiths were convened. His heart contained within it pastures for deer, monasteries for monks, a temple for idols, a Kaaba around which to parade, tablets for a Torah, and a Quran, as he said in one of his famous verses: “I follow the religion of love wherever its caravans go.”

This is how the movie ends in movies­—
The fade, the retreat, image dissolving
into the bath that bore it.