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Glancing out from our corner table
across the assisted living facility’s
cafeteria, my mother-in-law
Shirley says, “Why, there are no men here!”

The writer was drinking himself to death. In his first flush of freedom—he had come to Iowa from a land ruled by a military dictatorship—he drowned himself in vodka, and when for the third day running he was rushed to the emergency room...

Enraged to discover that Germany did not possess any work by Michelangelo, his favorite artist, Hitler was mildly consoled to find a painting by Caravaggio—Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio—whom Hitler thought was the same person as...

So little darkness in the darkness here.
Each leaf a mirror of moonlight, incomparable.
The Japanese maple spooncupped in gold

It was almost 11:30 a.m., July 22, 2004, and we were awaiting the arrival of the ten members of the National Commission on the Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (informally known as the 9/11 Commission). Most of the journalists...

I would argue that we are still under the mythos of populism, whether it be the relatively mild form promulgated by an aging William Jennings Bryan, who crossed verbal swords in the mid-1920s with Clarence Darrow over teaching Darwin in...

 A man I know hews space

from trees. Hauls himself up there, days,

Last century we took a lot of shots
Of what we did, framing things for Look and Life
So we could see us and our lot