Ed Simon

1 week ago | 3quarksdaily.com | Ed Simon

Alternating with my close reading column, every even numbered month will feature some of the novels that I've most recently read, including upcoming titles. A novel, like a symphony, must be conveyed through a particular artistry of time. Unlike a painting, or even a short lyric poem which gestures towards narrative, a novel must dwell in it.

2 weeks ago | hyperallergic.com | Ed Simon

Following the Trump administration’s May announcement that all international students at Harvard University — fully 27% of the student body — must either transfer or face deportation, Attorney General Pam Bondi delivered an address justifying the government’s actions.

1 month ago | jacobin.com | Ed Simon

A saga that ended with the rebel preacher Thomas Müntzer beneath an executioner’s axe in Mühlhausen on May 27, 1525, began not with his radical Protestant preaching or his apocalyptic visions, but rather a year before with snails. Helix pomatia, better known as the Burgundy snail, is common throughout Europe and found in the town of Stühlingen just below the Black Forest. Among other uses, it is prized for its large, brownish-cream-colored spiral shell that can be useful as a thread spool.

1 month ago | 3quarksdaily.com | 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.

1 month ago | lithub.com | Ed Simon

Chicago was illuminated in a million alabaster lights for several enchanted months in 1893 at a fair commemorating the quadricentennial of America’s discovery. A glowing magical city arose in South Chicago—Jackson Park transformed into the Midway Plaisance—where the domes, bridges, arches, and pavilions of the World’s Columbian Exposition were decorated with twinkling white lights installed by the Westinghouse Electric Company.