There are certain pivotal plays that make mighty noises in small rooms, and Dutchman, by the black activist LeRoi Jones—now known as Amiri Baraka—is famously one of them. At little more than 50 minutes in length, this furious 1964 prose poem has been revived in an excellent, troubling production at the tiny Cherry Lane Theatre Read More
Hyperbolic titles invite dissent. So here’s mine: What makes Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” “the poem that changed America,” as the cover of this essay collection proclaims?
Ginsberg might’ve responded by saying, as he did in a 1986 essay included here, that when San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore published “Howl” 50 years ago, changing America was part Read More
The one piece of art at the site of the World Trade Center is a squat cross welded of girders and mounted on a clumsy concrete footing at the eastern edge of the crater. The proportions are like something in your neighbor’s backyard.
Somehow it suits, though, because 9/11 as a place and event has Read More
The United States and Britain want tough new standards for inspection of Saddam Hussein’s arsenal, and Saddam Hussein won’t accept them. Is anyone surprised?
As for what we want: There have been no inspections in Iraq for four years. We have no way of knowing what components Saddam’s agents may have smuggled in, what weapons Read More
