We giggled nervously at our good luck Moving up the half-empty jazz club to the best seats. It began in force the next morning Insinuating into air vents Broadcasting in […]
Books & Poetry
BOOKS
Jessica Valenti Is Armed With Fact and Fury
In a new book, fueled by outrage, she takes on the war on reproductive rights
Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Jessica Valenti began tracking the effects of the court’s ruling. Fueled by outrage, she decided to write […]
POETRY
Stillman’s Gym: Which Kelly Do Youse Want?
Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who teaches my hands to battle and my fingers to fight. —Psalm 144 Phone call comes in: Lemme speak with Kelly. Which Kelly do […]
POETRY
Two Poems by Marilyn A. Johnson
The current ghost broom clean the measure of absence in the mud room no mud scuffed baseboards rusted sinks house we have worn you out mother locks the last door […]
LITTLE PEOPLE
Fairies Live Here — Believe It or Not
A new book by Andrew Warburton chronicles stories and sightings from across New England
If you want to see a fairy, says Andrew Warburton, all you have to do is find a four-leaf clover and place it on your forehead. He’s never found a […]
BOOK FESTIVAL
The Way We Teach Ourselves to See
Vinson Cunningham’s novel is set in Obama’s campaign for president
While New Yorker theater critic Vinson Cunningham’s Great Expectations is an autobiographical novel based on his experiences as a young staffer on Barack Obama’s first presidential run, it is not […]
BOOKS
Indie Reads: Back to School Edition
Nonfiction selections that will expand your horizons
For this installment of Indie Reads, we asked members of the Independent staff to offer some book recommendations now that summer is over and the transition from frothy beach reads […]
BOOK TALK
Muppets and Murder in Moscow
Natasha Lance Rogoff tells the strange story of a post-Cold War cultural exchange
In 1992, a year after the collapse of the Soviet Union, American television producer and reporter Natasha Lance Rogoff accepted the role of executive producer for a new project: Ulitsa […]
POETRY
Two Poems by Kary Wayson
Sweet Spring Summer in the Morning Afternoon Room-warm tea in the chipped blue cup. My husband — how I love him! — has gone off across the water we can […]
BOOKS
Henri Bendel’s Passion for Beauty
A new biography about a gay Jewish boy from Louisiana
Henri Bendel, the store, was synonymous in the American imagination with good taste, astronomical price tags, and a certain uptown vision of the good life. To shop at Henri Bendel […]
BOOKS
Object Permanence and What Remains in Absence
In The History of Sound, Ben Shattuck traces the meaning of objects across time
August is a poet with a fellowship in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. He’s lonely. The intoxication of procrastination and the cold fingers of autumn poking into his cabin […]
BOOKS
Michael Andor Brodeur Asks the Big Questions
A classical music critic and self-proclaimed ‘meathead’ writes about men, muscle, and mortality
In his powerlifting prime, Washington Post classical music critic Michael Andor Brodeur was able to lift 1,200 pounds of iron: the combined weight of his best deadlift, bench, and squat. […]
POETRY
Three Poems
Night-Blooming Cereus It wakes us to say to bloom once is not nothing. Night Once in a while –– sparks between people –– so stars can see everything they’re missing. […]
POETRY
Compensation
I think I understand. Without sufficient love, they compensate with hatred, not seeing how bountiful (how bountiful) it all really is… Rob Taylor’s Ads for Simplicity was published in 2013. He […]
BOOKS
The Long Shadows of a Dictatorship
Lily Meyer’s fictional Short War makes real the lasting trauma of the 1973 Chilean coup
Last September the people of Chile commemorated the 50th anniversary of the bloody, U.S.-backed coup d’état that changed the fate of their country and their lives on Sept. 11, 1973. […]
