The Brooklyn Rail
Critical Perspectives on Art, Politics and Culture
April 2007
Express
A Bard from East New York: Martín Espada
by Gabriel ThompsonExpress
Called “the Pablo Neruda of North American authors” by Sandra Cisneros, Martín Espada has published eight books of poetry, including Imagine the Angels of Bread, winner of an American Book Award, and Alabanza: New and Selected Poems 1982-2002, which received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement.
There Goes My City
by David FreedlanderExpress
There is a certain morphology of New York narrative that finds its way mainly into magazines, the City section of the New York Times, and in conversation between old timers and relatively recent arrivals, that goes something like this: The best time ever to have lived in this city, and in this neighborhood more exactly, was the day I moved here.
How to End the War
by Paul MattickExpress
How did World War I come to an end? Nobody I ask knows the answer to this question. This isn’t surprising—people aren’t taught much history, and anyway it happened long ago.
TELESUR’S PROGRAM
Aram Aharonian with Nikolas Kozloff
by Nikolas Kozloff
Express
Nikolas Kozloff, author of Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S. (Palgrave, 2006), recently sat down with Aram Aharonian, the Director of Telesur, a satellite news station run by the governments of Venezuela, Uruguay, Argentina and Cuba.
RANT RHAPSODY
Occupational Hazards
by Mark Read
Express
We had been in the holding cell at the 9th Precinct for maybe an hour or so when this lanky, punk-rock-circa-1983-looking dude (pale skin, gelled spiky jet black hair, metal-studded black leather jacket, metal-studded belt, black denim jeans, leather shitkicker boots) was escorted into the waiting area just outside the bars, a few feet away from my cellmates and me.
RANT RHAPSODY
Listening to Robinson
by Sabine Heinlein
Express
Tyrone Robinson is a sturdy looking man almost six feet tall with a very dark complexion. He is 46 years old and maybe a bit chubby. It is hard to say, though, whether it is his body that makes his clothes bulge or all the stuff he carries in his pockets.
Debtor’s Nation
by Williams ColeExpress
If you’re like most Americans, when you hand that piece of plastic to the cashier and they say “credit or debit” you’re likely to answer with the “c” word, burying the consequences of that purchase in a special part of your brain to be dealt with at a later time.
