Interventions

Welcome to Interventions, an experimental space where authors rehearse new ideas, reframe questions, or play unbridled within Arcade’s field of the humanities in the world. These short posts embrace the incomplete, the imperfect, and the indeterminate, but they may become much more: for example, the record of a thinker’s turn toward a new paradigm or the rough draft of a chapter in a new book. Rapid publication and immediate responses permit Interventions to foster conversation. The tone of the posts may range from personal to political, while maintaining a critical edge.

Published regularly, Interventions are often freestanding contributions to Arcade, but some may join our feature called Colloquies. Inquiries and submissions are received by the editor of Interventions.

Mothers, Daughters, Mothers

In a few weeks I'm going to Illinois to see my niece Ellie for the first time. I'm sitting up late tonight trying to imagine my younger sister as a mother. It's not easy. To me she's still the girl whose biggest aspiration in life was to own the newest Strawberry Shortcake doll.

Leonard Cohen: Poet, in a younger prime

The documentary is called Ladies & Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen.

Readability

David Pogue, who miraculously manages to remain both an enthusiast for all things technological while, at the same time, starting a small insurrection against cell phone companies, has now convinced me not to worry about which edition of Shakespeare my students use.

Dilution in a Quevedo Translation

Dilution is what I like to call the general effect in translation of flattening, watering down, blunting the impact, or erasing the tropes of a poetic text.

Brief thoughts about length

In this morning's paper I came across this quote from novelist Cormac McCarthy: "The director had the notion that he could put the entire book up on the screen. Well, you can't do that."

Sometimes a poem's just a poem

This morning a poet friend IM'd me a poem. That was a first for me. (And, actually, it was a Gchat message but you get the idea.) Soon, she will be going to Brazil for a long time, a place I've had reason to think about a fair bit, of late. The poet's status message led me to this video. I wonder if it means something.