The desk set is made of green glass with a pattern of dark leaves. The label names it Tiffany. Erin Hunt read it in fascination and mulled over these fine opalescent boxes. They would hold ink and paper, stamps, pens and blotter ends. And what would someone write with them, […]
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A writer’s library reveals Edith Wharton at home
On the flyleaf of a book of Japanese poetry translated into French, penciled handwriting tries out haikus. Haiku would have been a less familiar form in the early years of the 20th century, when the owner of the book sat here in an arm chair, playing with ideas. The handwriting is Edith Wharton’s. […]
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Novelists Lauren Groff and Heidi Pitlor explore the future of their craft
In an old town in northern Florida, a woman is walking at night. It’s raw weather even there, and she walks fast, angry and alone, and in the dark her neighborhood looks half marvelous and half brutal — bird of paradise flowers and black swans and old Victorian houses sagging […]
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Ross Gay’s ‘Unabashed Gratitude’ surges at Bennington College
On a spring night in Bloomington, Indiana, Ross Gay is planting young lettuces. Winter has hung on so long, a warm evening feels new — to stand barefoot in a troweled furrow with the air smelling of earth and stems, and peels in the compost pile. As he walks in […]
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National Book Awardwinning poet Louise Glück reads from ‘Faithful and Virtuous Night’
A man lies awake — gets up to walk. He remembers sharing a room with his bother when they were boys, his brother reading by nightlight and the sound of his breathing. He remembers excursions with their aunt, taking a boat upriver, watching a city float by in the dark. […]
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Awardwinning novelist Junot Diaz gives a rare reading at Williams College
He’s reading Watchmen in a tough neighborhood in Jersey. He’s surviving high school with role-playing quests and the mental disciplines of Dune. He’s writing elvish on the white board in his Rutgers dorm and a space odyssey in the Caribbean town where his mother was raised. It’s not easy loving […]
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Ocean Vuong holds calm in chaos with contemporary poetry rooted in Viet Nam
In honor of National Poetry Month we honor and thank a poet who recently came to visit. Five years ago he was giving readings in Brooklyn — Zachary Finch heard of them through a friend in the city and listened, awe-struck, to poems like Aubade with Burning City. Ocean Vuong […]
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Honoring Richard Wilbur, a national poet in the Berkshire hills — BTW column
‘The morning air is all awash with angels.’ The early morning scene has stayed with me since high school. It isn’t etherial or oversweet. In the early light about dawn, a man wakes and hears the laundry going up to dry. ‘The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,’ concrete, […]
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Edith Wharton comedies return live to Shakespeare & Company
Two women are sitting at an outdoor table at the cool end of a hot day in Rome. They are looking out at the ruins of the Roman forum, and they have known each other since they were teenagers. On another ridge, another woman is thinking with longing and fear of […]
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Melville and Hawthorne meet on Monument Mountain — BTW column
Arrowhead, Herman Melville’s historic house in Pittsfield, leads a marathon reading of Moby-Dick in early August and an annual hike up Monument Mountain in Great Barrington to commemorate Herman Melville’s meeting with Nathaniel Hawthorne. I have walked the loop on the mountain on a late summer afternoon and thought of […]
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