Poetry is perhaps the most intimate literary genre, in which secrets slip loose from their hiding places. Poems sidle up close enough to whisper (hot breath, smelling of wine and garlic) in your ear. Yet poetry also hails from an ancient... Read More

Americans have submitted to increasingly frantic, contradictory food fads in pursuit of a healthy diet. From banishing carbs, to factory-made dietetic meals (vacuum-sealed in plastic), and synthetic fat substitute (notorious for inducing... Read More

We grow up hearing the adage that “History is told by the victors”—the notion that those in power possess jurisdiction over our shared story. In authorized versions of history, the prevailing orthodoxy decides whose lives were... Read More

Few Baby Boomers who grew up lunching in public school cafeterias escaped ladles of an over-salted, brown glop known as chop suey. That meal passed as an introduction to “Asian” food, despite its dubious and controversial origins... Read More

Psychoanalyst and Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl described human existence as a search for meaning. He noted that in the absence of meaning, man becomes susceptible to despair, a condition inimical to life. Through words, human beings... Read More

In seeking to make sense of the world, Western intellectual tradition has celebrated the power of reason and the rational mind. Yet pivotal moments arise in life when the most formidable assembly of facts is useless, and its capacity for... Read More

The phenomenon of multiculturalism is often depicted as an outgrowth of the high-tech age, in which the Internet, global market economy, and air travel have radically changed the movement of art, knowledge, and news. Yet one of... Read More

Much of the literary iconography of Northern Michigan has been drawn in the masculine tradition of Hemingway and Jim Harrison. Hard drinking and blood sports predominate; the legends and characters that inhabit literature from this... Read More