This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,--
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,--
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!
There was a giant in time of old,
A mighty one was he;
He had a wife, but she was a scold,
So he kept her shut in his mammoth fold;
And he had children three.
It happened to be an election day,
And the giants were choosing a king;
The people were not democrats then,
They did not talk of the rights of men,
And all that sort of thing.
Then the giant took his children three,
And fastened them in the pen;
The children roared; quoth the giant, "Be still!"
And Dorchester Heights and Milton Hill
Rolled back the sound again.
Then he brought them a pudding stuffed with plums,
The ugly condo development at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Beech has been selected by Karen Klinger as one of the first Cambridge Eyesores in her NeighborMedia series.
Crawford is an American photograher over ninety years old. Born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, she graduated from Smith College, after spending her Junior Year in France. She married Canadian-American painter Ralston Crawford, and from then on the Crawfords lived in many places. During World War II home was Washington DC, but afterwards, until Ralston died in 1978, they were basically New Yorkers. Their sons, Robert, Neelon and John are all artists. Crawford has traveled widely in Europe, China, Japan, Africa and the Middle East, including nine trips to the Republic of Yemen.
In the nationally celebrated Consuming Kids, Susan Linn provided an unsparing look at how modern childhood is molded by commercialism. The resulting threat to children's play is the subject of her timely and fascinating new book. In The Case for Make Believe, Linn argues that, while play is crucial to human development, nurturing creative play in modern-day America is not only countercultural--it's a threat to corporate profits.
All men have mothers is a hard truth that the newly unhyphenated Maisie Grey has learned the hard way. When she finally gets rid of the mama's-boy husband and happily settles down with her teenage son, Tommy, she's still stuck with her irascible mother-in-law, a woman who never liked her, criticized her every step of the way, and yet, as
Brother of Simon and son of Frank, Nathaniel Rich carries on the family literary tradition with his own "hot book". The Mayor's Tongue, a debut novel, follows a widower and a young New Yorker whose paths vconverge in a small Italian town whose mayor is a supernatural evil force.
Rich is a senior editor of The Paris Review. He has written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Slate, and the Village Voice. He is the author of San Francisco Noir and lives in San Francisco.
Hall's moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her blood.
