‘Bridgerton,’ Season 2: I Have Fallen (And I Cannot Get Up)
If you have succumbed to the fever that is 'Bridgerton,' you can rest assured that you are not alone.
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Emotions Ran High at the 94th Academy Awards
The Oscars’ hosts, a triumvirate of funny women, started the ceremony by saying, “This year, the Academy hired three women to host . . . because it’s cheaper than hiring one man.”
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Poetry Sunday:
“Bamboo, the Dance,” by Marilyn Chin
Marilyn Chin, who was born in Hong Kong and raised in Portland, Oregon, has spent a 30-year career fusing cultures, exploring how her ancestry meets her personal, political, and poetic life.
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Pixar’s ‘Turning Red’: Why Some are Seeing Red
'Turning Red' is the first Pixar feature solely directed by a woman, Domee Shi, who started her career as a storyboarding intern a decade ago, worked on 'Inside Out' and 'Toy Story 4,' and earned an Oscar for her 2018 short film 'Bao.'
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Poetry Sunday: “Conservatory,” by Idris Anderson
That’s an effective strategy, choosing a title that multiplies associations in the reader’s mind even before the poem is read. Will the poem involve any of these things, or instead, play off of my expectations and surprise me?
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Designing Women: ‘The Dropout’ and ‘Inventing Anna’
'The Dropout' and 'Inventing Anna' are detailed accounts of complex women and their protracted crime sprees.
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Poetry Sunday:
“Elegy with Civil War Shadowbox,” by Jane Satterfield
“Elegy with Civil War Shadowbox” is a meditation on the challenges of memorializing war.
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Women’s History Month: Read, Listen, Watch, Reflect
This Women’s History Month, we reflect on the achievements of women and girls across the centuries and pay tribute to the pioneers who paved the way.
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Martha Silano: “When I begin to dig”
“When I begin to dig” begins with what sparked the poem: Martha Silano’s discovery that the English word “verse” derives from Latin for “to turn,” itself derived from the action of a plow’s turn at the end of a furrow during field cultivation.
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Oscar-Nominee Jessica Chastain in
‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’
Jessica Chastain's ability to create a whole and sympathetic person under a virtual, and sometimes seemingly immobile, mask is surely what her Oscar nomination is honoring (and for which she just won the SAG Award).
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Midge Maisel is Back, But Not Bingeable
Mrs. Maisel may be back where she started — not just in her old club, but in her old apartment, and even (mini-spoiler here) back in jail. But this time, she’s taking no prisoners.
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Athena Kildegaard:
“a safe, well-defined, acceptable unknown”
In the poem’s last lines, “evidence” is a crucial word. Seeking “a safe, well-defined, acceptable unknown,” perhaps, we look for scientific validation of the mystery, a concept fundamentally not susceptible to this kind of metric.
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How Women Fare in Super Bowl Ads
I’m happy to report that this year’s Super Bowl ads were less sexist than usual.
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MK Chavez: “Little Red Riding Hood/Companion”
MK Chavez empowers Little Red Riding Hood, an innocent damsel in distress if ever there were one, by giving her autonomy over her body and destiny and, ultimately, recognizing her multiplicity.
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A Streaming Guide to Black History Month
A list of powerful movies and television series depicting the Black American experience.
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Georgia Johnson Douglas: “Black Woman,” “Foredoom,” and “The Heart of a Woman”
In this week’s poems, the fixed forms and elevated diction sound archaic to contemporary ears, but their ideas were revolutionary in Georgia Douglas Johnson’s time and remain relevant today.
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‘Single Drunk Female’
Clearly autobiographical but also both amusing and touching, 'Single Drunk Female' tells the story of a 20-something journalist who is smart and funny and addicted to alcohol
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Poetry Sunday: “Whosoever Holds This Hammer,”
by Dawn Manning
By the end of the poem the speaker wholly identifies with Thor, capable of destruction as well as creation and blessing, and the poem ends in a place of tremendous raw power and confidence with her joyfully striking the flat glowing disc of her “own sun.” What a wonderful affirmation of the act of creativity!
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It’s Old Money vs. New in ‘The Gilded Age’
'The Gilded Age' raises questions of human nature and acute observations about so-called progress and the inevitability of change.
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Poetry Sunday: “Frances of the Cadillac,”
by Laura Van Prooyen
This poem reminds me that part of being human is living on to wrestle with the legacy left by the people we love who leave us, sometimes under circumstances we cannot accept or even understand.
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‘Being the Ricardos’ Disappoints (But I’ll Always Love Lucy)
'Being the Ricardos' is a neat piece of filmmaking, but it didn’t make me feel I knew the couple any better than I had before.
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Raquel Vasquez Gilliland:
“The Tale of the Earth” and “The Tale of Spice”
Today’s poems are from a chapbook called "Tales from the House of Vasquez," winner of the 2018 Rattle Chapbook Prize, and they are representative of the book as a whole: 14 spare, free-verse poems about motherhood, feminism, family, and origin.
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The Crushing Responsibility of Motherhood in
‘The Lost Daughter’
What’s rare, and exponentially more interesting, are films that reflect the full spectrum of motherhood, from dizzying love to what Leda in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s new movie 'The Lost Daughter' calls “crushing responsibility.”
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“Snorkeling,” by Allison Funk
The poem evocatively opens with a question: “What if, late in my life, / an old love returned?”
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