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Last November I published the following poem in The Sun: If you are / dissatisfied / with / this poem / IN ANY WAY, / return it to: / Sparrow, P.O. / Box 63, / Phoenicia, / NY 12464.
By SparrowMay 2004I thought the place looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure. I put down my plate of eggs, grabbed the TV remote, and turned up the sound. It was an abortion-clinic bombing: one bomb to lure the law, a second bomb to blow them up.
By Corvin ThomasMarch 2004Step into any coffeehouse in any college town across the country, and you’ll find a couple of small, independent publications stacked by the door. . . . They publish a few issues and then disappear, or, rarely, last a year or two before becoming just a memory in the minds of a handful of locals. Now try to imagine that, thirty years from now, one of those odd little publications will still exist. Even more improbable: imagine that it will have found tens of thousands of readers all around the country.
By The SunJanuary 2004Something has always attracted me to the underdog, and it’s hard to think of an enterprise with worse odds of survival than a raggedy-ass hippie paper in a largely redneck Western county. We were up against a reactionary, well-established, deep-pocketed competitor who could afford to wait us out.
By Jaime O’NeillJanuary 2004We chatted about this and that, and then I launched into my speech: “I want to build a noncommercial radio station here in Washington. It’ll have music from all over the world and commentary from every point of view. It’ll have interviews and recordings of important speeches and documentaries and news programs that will look at all sides of the issues. Most of all, it will respect the audience.”
By Lorenzo W. MilamJanuary 2004I haven’t memorized many poems, but I’ve never forgotten Richard Brautigan’s “Star-Spangled Nails”: “You’ve got / some Star-Spangled / nails / in your coffin, kid. / That’s what / they’ve done for you, / son.” It was published in 1968, when the death toll of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam had climbed to thirty thousand.
By Sy SafranskyJanuary 2003A radical is somebody who goes out to the furthest edge of the debate in order to gain leverage with which to move the larger body of thought. If an ant wants to move an elephant, he has to move as far out onto the seesaw as possible. Then, through the laws of physics, he can move the great weight. That’s what activists do, only in a more psychological fashion. You go as far out there as you can in order to move society. The problem is that, once you’re out there, you’re perceived as an extremist and society is unwilling to embrace you.
By Greg KingSeptember 2002Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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