Martha Collins’s haunting, intimate poems are a form of conversation with readers on subjects as varied as her family history, racism, politics, and, most essentially, the poet herself, “the body […]
Books & Poetry
BIG PICTURE
Reflections in the Badlands
A chance encounter with a Townsend’s solitaire
The Townsend’s Solitaire defends two worlds — the juniper grove and its reflection. Endlessly he sings on the sill between. That first winter after my brother died unexpectedly in fall […]
POETRY
First Rain at the New House
Comes at night as if from a great distance muffled, like one half asleep. Last year we slept under skylights close to the weather. It rained last night I say. […]
POETRY
Sal’s
They are older, seated in the corner. It is warm and amber in the small room. The busy waiter signals with his hand — one minute! — and they nod […]
POETRY
The Glorious First
In Britain, Aug. 12, “the Glorious Twelfth,” marks the start of the red-grouse-shooting season. In Eastham, Nov. 1 marks the start of the recreational oyster-gathering season. “Shooting-box”: a small country […]
POETRY
The Bear
My aggressive hunger for something that I wanted appeared in a dream as a huge brown bear, […]
FICTION
What We Carry With Us
Phone. Wallet. Keys. A modicum of dignity. An ocean of guilt. For me, the humiliation of Bobby Chandler beating me up in fourth grade. For her, a grandmother’s dictum that […]
THE THOUGHT FOX
A Life in Poetry With No ‘Excess Stuff’
Keith Althaus discusses his past, process, and pursuit of the perfect line
“Pick a chair,” says poet Keith Althaus, welcoming me to his house on Shore Road in North Truro. He and his wife, Susan Baker, have lived in the house since […]
MEMOIR
Sebastian Junger Considers the Inevitable Precipice
In My Time of Dying is an aneurysm-spurred trip through the cosmos
In My Time of Dying is like Schrödinger’s cat. Until you open the book, author Sebastian Junger is both alive and dead. But in the famous quantum theory thought experiment, […]
MEMOIR
Cher Tells Her Remarkable, Resilient Truth
Part one of the star’s story reveals the grit behind her reinventions
My mother was from Las Vegas. On one summer visit when I was 12, she took me to Ceasars Palace to see Cher in concert. During the encore, Cher ran […]
BOOKS
The Many-Splendored Loves of Older Gay Men
Zigzag is a short story collection for an uncertain age
Queer baby boomers are now elders, the first generation to grow old after Stonewall. They came of age in a world where it was possible to love openly, keep one’s […]
POETRY
Oh, the men, the men
I had a love And then another love And then that other love Went away And still Love remains Jeremy Bearer-Friend teaches tax law in Washington, D.C. Submit poems to […]
POETRY
Kindness
Our friend Zehra is back for an exhibition of her work at the museum. Gone the grunge look and her dark hair is blond, cropped, dramatic. She’s wearing nice clothes […]
BOOKS
The Makings of a Sally Rooney Novel
Intermezzo, the author’s fourth, follows a pair of brothers in the aftermath of their father’s death
A book. How quaint. An anachronism, really. How do you turn this thing on? Not just a book, a novel. You know, like Jane Austen, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf. Who? […]
WOMEN’S WEEK
Trump (Mary, not Donald) Is Coming to Town
The former president’s estranged niece wants to tell you about the danger we’re in
Mary Trump has been coming to Provincetown since she was a six-year-old at Cape Cod Sea Camps in Brewster. In the early 2000s, she briefly owned Kensington Gardens, then a […]
