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Arts in Society brings our poetry, fiction, and cultural criticism into a common project. It focuses on how the arts—including the literary and visual arts, music, theater, dance, and film—can speak directly to the most pressing political and civic concerns, from racism, inequality, and poverty to sex- and gender-based violence, democratic backsliding, and a collapsing natural world.
Remembering poets Lynda Hull and Michael S. Harper, with original portraits
Two white men carrying briefcases walk in on a congressional meeting held by African leaders dressed in Western attire. Clapping at the president who resembles Léopold Senghor. He uses words like “revolutionary” and “independence” and they garner an applause.
Critics tend to discount Rich’s later poems, fundamentally misunderstanding how they engage her radical vision of community.
even the long-gone
once knew tenderness.
“In the East, it is the cow that animalizes the man. Hence, the native occupies this intermediate space between man and beast, which we term ‘savage.’”
I begin to feel my body rise / and I can believe / in what freedom must feel like.
To not have had the luxury to think “the world is over,” but to feel it instead.
My grandmother tells me she loved you fiercely
in the way she reaches for me when your name
is spoken.
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