A Simple Ontology

maybe flower petals are held to stems by thought
and the wind’s a counter-thought that plucks
and sets them elsewhere in the grass
to grow in contemplative resolution
beside my notion of a grub-pulling crow

maybe the wind itself is a palpable bright idea,
something about motion and the abhorrence of vacuums,
something about coming and going,
about ferocity and stillness,
about war and its absence

maybe the moon’s the concept of fullness,
loss, abatement, regeneration from slivers,
hope at the hour of the wolf, the opposite of
darkness at the break of noon, the
upside of shadow

maybe Descartes had it right
and this from horizon to horizon is
a simple ontology,
an inherent daisy chain of ideas chasing its tale
regardless—

one
idea hatched in this synapse nest
is to harvest thought from thought
under a perception of blue
while the conception of breeze
riffles a hint of hair and I place them
like dreams of plums into the
essence of basket and give them
with the intention of love
to my belief in the naturally
beautiful being of you

by Jim Culleny
February 26, 2011-Rev, 5/23/25

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by Rafaël Newman

On September 29, 1978, Albino Luciani, who had been elected Pope John Paul I just 33 days earlier, on August 26, 1978, was found dead in his bed, his death likely due to a heart attack. Luciani had succeeded Paul VI, who was himself preceded by John XXIII—the two Popes were commemorated in their short-lived successor’s double-barreled appellation—and would be followed on October 16, 1978, by John Paul II.

I was 14 years old at the time and had recently begun studying ancient languages, so the Latin pronouncements from the Vatican press office aroused my exhibitionist adolescent spirit. This, combined with the salience of a solemnly pronounced “Year of Three Popes,” which echoed a similarly multiple interregnum in Roman imperial history; a perverse will to deflate overblown expressions of gravity, my own included; and a natural tendency to pomposity and sententiousness, all inspired me to write a poem:

Paulum sed magnopere
Pro Papa Ioanne Paulo Primo

Now the golden hammer has struck,
The pastor’s ghost is lost.
Oh, his great gain is our bad luck,
Ere the tomb of the VIth is moss’d.

Oh, thou bless’d and humble man
Who in thy bare feet stand:
Cleanse our rude souls and spirits fan
With calm empower’d hand.

Why art thou gone so soon from here?
Why was thy term so small?
And why is one who was so dear
Held tight in heaven’s thrall?

Not long afterwards, my father, himself a published poet and novelist and in those days a professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia, asked what I had been up to recently. I passed on to him some of the verses I had been setting down in my journal, among them my poem on the death of John Paul I. He responded, along with words of cautious praise for other of my efforts, in surprise at my having found something so admirable in the late Pope that I had been moved to write him this encomium.

I was mortified. Read more »

by David Winner

When Taylor Swift was living in New York about a decade ago, she misused one of our classic expressions. Bodega means more than just corner store.

Tooling around Santo Domingo about the same time Taylor was living in New York, I stopped periodically at its ur-bodegas. Generally lacking what Americans call “amenities,” proprietors in the back dispensed individual cigarettes, candy, beer, rum. In the afternoons and evenings, the bodegas sometimes transformed into makeshift bars, cranked music, customers drinking booze, sometimes dancing.

Seven years ago, Angela, my wife, and I moved to the outer reaches of a Brooklyn neighborhood called Kensington that lies in between two crucial arteries – the car part stores, mosques and Bengali sweet shops of Coney Island Avenue and the grand fifties condos in not very picturesque decline on Ocean Parkway. Our neighborhood, reminiscent of Queens, is home to mélange of ethnic and cultural groups: recent middle-aged white additions like us; old school Irish/Italian/Jewish whites; Uzbeks, Tajiks and other Central Asians; Bangladeshis and Pakistanis; Mexicans; Afro and Indo Caribbeans, and lots of ultra-Orthodox Jews. These ethnic identities are not exactly reflected by our three closest bodegas: spaces that have become part of my landscape, geopolitical bell-weathers, and unfortunate victims of my big mouth.

Up our street past the Nigerian church, whose food pantry feeds thousands, you’ll find yourself at Mian’s corner store, which we refer to as “Donald’s bodega,” in honor of Donald, who spends most of his days hanging out there.

Donald, according to neighborhood lore, had fried his brain on drugs as a young man and somehow landed some lucrative disability. In his early sixties now with a paunch and sparkling white hair, we have never seen him in the company of friends or family. The bodega is his only social outlet. On the very rare days, Eid perhaps, that Donald’s is closed, poor Donald can be found in different less familiar bodegas on Cortelyou Road, looking uncomfortable outside of his native habitat. Read more »

by Eric Feigenbaum

When I tell someone I lived in Singapore, the most common response is some variation of, “Singapore – isn’t that where it’s illegal to chew gum?”

I know a Greek couple who refuses to visit Singapore because they feel the rules are too strict and inhumane.  I don’t think they know what all the rules are – but in a country that still has strong opposition to helmet laws, I suppose restrictions on chewing gum and urinating in public seem fascist.

So, no – it’s not illegal to chew gum in Singapore. It was from 1992 to 2004. Although you do have to show identification and be entered into a log at any store in which you buy gum – and the gum has to be certified to have dental value. So, it’s not exactly a chew-as-you-please policy either.

British journalist Peter Day interviewed Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in 2000 and tackled the chewing gum issue:

Day suggested that chewing gum stuck to the pavements might be a sign that the desired new spirit of creativity Lee sought for his country had arrived.

“Putting chewing gum on our subway train doors so they don’t open, I don’t call that creativity. I call that mischief-making,” Lee replied. “If you can’t think because you can’t chew, try a banana.” Read more »

This, in the video above, is the river Eisack’s heavy flow through Franzensfeste, South Tyrol, last week as the snows on the surrounding mountains start to melt. And below is a photo of the river just before it empties into the Stausee, just around the corner from the last part shown in the video, a lake created by a dam on the river. The pedestrian path next to the river is new and very lovely to take a walk on.

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by Leanne Ogasawara

1.

“You can’t fall that far in Japan.”

Writer and photographer Craig Mod arrived in Tokyo when he was only nineteen. In many ways, he was already running. Running from a challenging childhood, running from bullies. And running from that feeling like he was always just one step away from disaster because of violence and lack of opportunity in his hometown.

It’s a story we know: of people leading middle class lives in a factory town—maybe in the mid-west? —only to watch when the factory closes and the whole town becomes suddenly out of work. This leads to hardship and poverty, which can, and often does, lead to drugs and violence. And in Mod’s case, it led to trauma when his best friend, who’s like a brother to him, is murdered— another casualty of economic injustice.

But even before Bryan dies, Mod already knew he wanted to get as far away as possible from the place where he was born. He longed to see the world and maybe be able to grow as an artist and as a human being. But in a world of constant struggle, that is easier said than done.

Almost on a whim, he lands in Japan, where he begins to take long walks. Crisscrossing the country on ancient pilgrimage routes, like the Kumano Kodō, Mod starts opening up to people. And he is astonished by this new land in which he’s found himself, where so many of the problems back home had simply been solved.

Not to say it’s perfect and definitely not to say that Japanese people don’t have their own problems, but as he explains, in Japan, the safety net is stronger. And so, even the least fortunate citizen cannot fall that far. Part of it is simply having universal healthcare, outstanding public transportation, and a solid public education infrastructure—one that is not based on wealth and zip codes like back home. That alone makes life less fraught, he says, and work becomes less perilous since your job no longer determines life and death healthcare outcomes nor the quality of your children’s education.

And so, arriving in Japan was a revelation. And feeling less vulnerable, he slowly begins to open himself to the world. Read more »

by Charles Siegel

On April 30^th my firm joined the Texas Civil Rights Project, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Muslim Advocates, and the CLEAR Project to file a habeas corpus petition in federal court, seeking the release of our client Leqaa Kordia, a New Jersey resident who has been held for over two months at an ICE detention center 40 miles southwest of Dallas. Attorneys for Palestinian student protestor held in North Texas file challenge in court | KERA News.

Ms. Kordia is Palestinian, and she has lost many family members to Israel’s current military campaign in Gaza. In April 2024 she attended a peaceful demonstration at Columbia University, joining others in chanting “ceasefire now!” She was one of dozens cited for violating a local ordinance, but the citation was swiftly dismissed. Nearly a year later, the administration announced that it would be taking enforcement action against noncitizens who exercised their First Amendment rights by publicly supporting the Palestinian cause. As a result, Ms. Kordia was detained by the federal government and transferred 1500 miles from her home. Her health has suffered in detention, and her rights to pray according to her faith and observe a halal diet have been repeatedly frustrated. An immigration judge reviewed her case and determined she should be released pending the payment of a bond, which her family promptly posted. Even though it very rarely appeals such decisions, the government appealed this one, resulting in her continued detention. Her ongoing confinement is a consequence of nothing other than the exercise of her First Amendment right to speak, and the Trump administration’s campaign to “combat antisemitism.”

Soon after he was inaugurated, Trump said of students protesting the Gaza war, “we ought to get them all out of the country. They’re troublemakers, agitators. They don’t love our country. We ought to get them the hell out.” In a court filing in the case of Mahmoud Khalil, a student who helped lead protests at Columbia, Secretary of State Rubio stated that the presence of persons with “beliefs, statements, or associations” he deems to be counter to U.S. foreign policy, undermines U.S. policy to combat antisemitism around the world and to protect “Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States,” and is enough to justify deportation. This ignores entirely, of course, the fact that many campus protesters are Jewish, and that one need not be antisemitic at all to deplore some of the ways in which Israel has conducted the war and is now needlessly prolonging it.

Using the same excuse, the administration has also drastically cut funding to leading universities, most prominently Harvard. On April 14^th, the president’s “Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism” announced “a freeze on $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contract value to Harvard.” Just last week, another $450 million in grants were cut, with no further explanation. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

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Katie Newell. Second Story. 2011, Flint, Michigan.

More here, and here.

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by William Benzon

The Saint Matthew Passion – yes, I know, by Bach – was a rock band I played in back in the ancient days, 1969 through 1971, when I was working on a master’s degree in Humanities at Johns Hopkins. Before I can tell you about that band, however, I want to tell you something about my prior musical experience, both when I was just a kid growing up in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in the Western part of the state. Football country, Steeler country. Then I entered Johns Hopkins, where I finally allowed myself to like rock and roll. That’s when I joined the Passion. After that, ah after that, indeed.

Before Johns Hopkins

I started playing trumpet in fourth grade, group lessons at school, then private lessons at home for a couple of years.

Next I started taking lessons with a man named Dave Dysert, who gave lessons out of a teaching studio he’d built in his basement. When I became interested in jazz, he was happy to encourage that. I got a book of Louis Armstrong solos. He’d accompany me on the piano. Made special exercises in swing interpretation. Got me to take piano lessons so I could learn keyboard harmony. I learned a lot from him: My Early Jazz Education 6: Dave Dysert. Those lessons served me well, when, several years later, I joined The Saint Matthew Passion.

When I entered middle school I joined both the marching band and the concert band. Marching band was OK, sometimes actual fun. But the music was, well, it was military music and popular ditties dressed up as military music. I even fomented rebellion in my junior year, which was promptly quashed. Concert band was different. We played “real” music – movie scores, e.g. from Ben Hur (“March of the Charioteers” was a blast), classical transcriptions, e.g. Dvorak’s New World Symphony, Broadway shows, e.g. West Side Story, and this that and the other as well. We were a good, very good, both marching band and concert band.

I also played in what was called a “stage band” at the time. It had the same instrumentation as a big jazz band – trumpets, trombones, saxophones, rhythm section (drums, bass, guitar, piano) – and played the same repertoire. One of the tunes we played was the theme from The Pink Panther, by the great Henry Mancini. I was playing second trumpet, the traditional spot for the “ride” trumpeter, the guy who took the improvised solos. Since this arrangement was written for amateurs, there was a (lame-ass) solo written into the part. I wanted none of that. I composed my own solo. I’d been making up my own tunes for years, and Mr. Dysert had given me the tools I needed to compose a solo – another step further and I’d have been able to improvise on the spot, but that’s not how we did it back then, at least not in the sticks. So I composed my own solo. Surprised the bejesus out of the director the first time I played it in rehearsal. But he took it well.

That’s what I had behind me when, in the Fall of 1965, I went off to Johns Hopkins. Read more »

Eternal Day-long Sum

The music of what happens
begins with a bottom line of drums,
as in the foundation of a house,
percussion— the thumps of
bass in sync with a wind of horns:
baritone, bassoon, tuba; and in the
whispers of brushed snares, the
round tones of tympany, and in the
rests between —the spaces, those silent
shifts that may change everything:

a thunder-crash of cymbal, but then,
there, a rest, followed by
bells of glockenspiel—

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by Steven Gimbel

In my Philosophy 102 section this semester, midterms were particularly easy to grade because twenty seven of the thirty students handed in slight variants of the same exact answers which were, as I easily verified, descendants of ur-essays generated by ChatGPT. I had gone to great pains in class to distinguish an explication (determining category membership based on a thing’s properties, that is, what it is) from a functional analysis (determining category membership based on a thing’s use, that is, what it does). It was not a distinction their preferred large language model considered and as such when asked to develop an explication of “shoe,” I received the same flawed answer from ninety percent of them. Pointing out this error, half of the faces showed shame and the other half annoyance that I would deprive them of their usual means of “writing” essays.

My comments to them steered away from moralizing about academic integrity and instead I asked what kind of class this was. “Philosophy,” they droned united, sensing the irony. “And what do we do in philosophy?” “Think.” Yes, I told them, in a couple years they would have a boss, likely a romantic partner, maybe even kids, at which point not one of them will care what they think. This may be the last time anyone really does. Why surrender that? Isn’t that what makes you human? Why willingly hand over your very personhood to a machine when this may be your last opportunity to fully embrace it?

I pointed out that never during the semester did I appear in the classroom wearing anything unexpected on my feet. I don’t really need them to tell me what makes something a shoe. The point of the question was not to write down the correct answer. Rather, the value of the exercise was to wrestle with something that seems at first glance trivially easy, but then gets hard when you consider boundary cases. Take this straightforward case and see how tricky it is in order to start building the cognitive muscles you’ll need when thinking about justice, God, truth, or love. It is the process, the struggle, that is important. And that is precisely what our contemporary AI eliminates.

I asked how many work-out and most hands went up. I then asked if they could lift more with a forklift. When they said yes, I asked “Then, why not take one to the gym?” This turned into a utilitarian justification of building skills that will benefit them in their future. Read more »

by Ed Simon

When critics describe Philip Levine as a “working class poet,” normally they have in mind his Detroit-upbringing, or his effecting verse about rarely discussed subjects such as laboring on the assembly line of a Ford factory. Often, there is a sense that the former Poet Laurette of the United States is particularly working class not just because of his subjects, but because of his style as well; that Levine writes in an unaffected, unadorned, and unpretentious manner. This is the poet whom in one of his most famous lyrics could defiantly write in the second-person that “You know what work is – if you’re/old enough to read this you know what/work is, although you may not do it./Forget you,” that piecing two-word sentence after the end-stop simultaneously a declaration of independence from a particular variety of literati and a declaration of allegiance to another. All of this is fair, good, and true, Levine’s style of low-spun verse meticulously and carefully presents particular commitments in a manner that reads easily but is nonetheless intricate to compose, but that style need not be limited to those particular subjects for which the poet is most renowned.

Indeed another poem from that 1991 collection What Work Is entitled “Soloing” does nothing less than explicate the origin of poems, or rather the origin of inspiration, and the manner in which human connection can be forged through artistic engagement; all of that accomplished without ever resorting to multisyllabic Latinate words like “transcendent,” “luminous,” “numinous,” or “incandescent.”  The narrator of “Soloing” recounts a narrative whereby he comes to visit his mother in California, when she tells him about how in a dream the saxophone playing of John Coltrane moved her to tears. Unlike a more metaphysically-inclined poet, say a Robert Hass or a Louise Gluck, Levine is a poet who eschews an overly-theological diction. “Soloing” is, in many ways, a manifestly concrete poem; abstractions are avoided throughout. We’re presented with images like a television which is “gray, expressionless;” of suburban streets with the “neighbors quiet,” of “palm trees and all-/night super markets pushing/orange back-lighted oranges at 2 A.M.” Yet there is a sacred in Levine’s profane, this land of abundance and plenty, where the repetitive parallelism and redundancy of “orange back-lighted oranges” is a miracle in its own way (not least of all in the eerie exactitude of the image).

Levine plays with this trope of the Golden State as a type of promised land (so different from the Detroit in the collection’s other poems), where “I have driven for hours down 99,/over the Grapevine into heaven…. Finding solace in California/just where we were told it would/be.” This Edenic language shouldn’t be read as ironic; indeed, when Levine writes “What a world, a mother and her son/finding solace in California” the chuckling weariness of it isn’t an expression of sarcasm, but of amazement. That amazement is the through-line in the poem’s story, both that the elderly mother can be so moved by the music of a “great man half/her age,” but also that the ineffability and inexpressibility of artistic connection can move anyone. Read more »