In any given decade of his life in New York, John Giorno could be found right in the middle of whatever the new scene might be, hanging out with the era’s defining figures and embodying the moment: in the fifties, meeting Jack Kerouac at Colum…
I can’t escape some weird feeling about Beanie Babies and the bizarre hysteria they generated.
What was the Princess Diana Beanie Baby?In the midnineties, my older sisters and I collected Ty Beanie Babies, as most of our peer group did. When I think of Beanie Babies, I think of the piles. Big piles saturated with every color and texture of fuz…
Visualizing opium dreams through the etchings of Piranesi. [portfolio_slideshow include="75485,75486,75487,75488,75489,75490,75491,75492,75493" exclude="65536"] It’s Thomas De Quincey’s birthday today—what better time to tour the mind-bending…
Many eminent American poets have elegized Holiday, attempting to capture something of her exquisite voice, whose unique tough-tender grain suggested a life of extremes. Langston Hughes’s “Song for Billie Holiday,” Frank O’Hara’s “The Day …
Game of Thrones and medieval poetry.Game of Thrones, of which the season finale is tonight, is the rare show that affords Middle English enthusiasts a chance to geek out: the series makes many nods to medieval literature. Scholars have noted that it …