Category Archives: Letters

Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop: Boston Marathons

Posted on April 17, 2013 by wcd2

April 17, 2013 He writes only about the Civil War dead: Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the soldiers from the all-black 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, captured in bronze by August Saint-Gaudens. The sculpture isn’t all that close to the finish … Continue reading →

Posted in Americas, Cities, collaboration, Letters, Public art, Twentieth century literature | Tagged 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, August Saint-Gaudens, Boston Common, Boston Marathon, Castine Maine, Civil War, Elizabeth Bishop, For the Union Dead, March on the Pentagon, New York, Robert Gould Shaw, Robert Lowell | Leave a comment

Gore Vidal (1925-2012): 2006 Letter on the Palestinian nation.

Posted on August 1, 2012 by wcd2

August 1, 2012 Gore Vidal’s passing is marked worldwide by a citational frenzy: all those quips, those acidic one-liners, from the past 86 years. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, all have their favorites; the Guardian … Continue reading →

Posted in African-American literature, Afro-Asian alliances, Arabic, collaboration, Comparative literature, Ethnicity, globe, Islam, Letters, Middle East, Newspapers, Nobel Prize, peripheral networks, print medium, Racial violence, Twentieth century literature, World religions | Tagged 2006 Letter from 18 Authors on the Palestinian Nation, Arundhati Roy, Gaza, Gore Vidal, Guardian, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jessica Hagedorn, LA Times, New York Times, the Nation magazine, Toni Morrison, Washington Post, West Bank | 7 Comments

Spanish Civil War: Hughes and Hemingway

Posted on July 4, 2012 by wcd2

July 4, 2012 The Beinecke Library doesn’t have a great Hemingway Collection (most of his material is at the JFK Presidential Library in Boston), but I did find a rare photo, taken in Madrid in 1937, Hemingway with Langston Hughes, … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, African-American literature, Arabic, Caribbean literature, collaboration, Cuba, Cuban poetry, Ethnicity, Global South, Islam, Latin America, Letters, Libraries, Modernist poetry, Newspapers, peripheral networks, Spanish, Translation, Twentieth century literature, world literature | Tagged Baltimore Afro-American, Beinecke Library, Cuba Libre, Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bells Tolls, General Franco's Moors, Gypsies, Havana, JFK Presidential Library, Langston Hughes, Michael Koltyov, Moors, Nicolas Guillen, Oklahoma, Spanish Civil War | 2 Comments

Wallace Stevens, amigo of Cuban writers

Posted on April 18, 2012 by wcd2

April 18, 2012 Wallace Stevens and Cristina García? Not the most obvious pairing. Yet it is Stevens’s poems that remained on García’s desk throughout the writing of Dreaming in Cuban, giving the novel its epigraph. And for Stevens, Havana is … Continue reading →

Posted in Caribbean literature, Comparative literature, Cuba, Global South, Latin America, Letters, Modernist poetry, peripheral networks, Spanish, Translation, Twentieth century literature, Universities, world literature | Tagged " José Rodríguez Feo, "Academic Discourse in Havana", "Someone puts a Pineapple 'Together", Antillean, Cristina García, Dreaming in Cuban, El Sol, Hartford, Havana, Key West, Madrid, Secretaries of the Moon, Wallace Stevens | 2 Comments