News & Events | Page 156 | The Common | A Modern Sense of Place: Stories, Poems, Essays & Images

At the Edge of the World

April 6, 2018 Essays

The room was full, though not as jammed as the time I’d visited the summer before, when the space felt hot with the exhalation of hundreds of miserable souls. It was still full enough that I bumped into people and they bumped into me as we moved around with our heads bent uncomfortably backwards. A couple of women sat on the floor and leaned back to stare at the ceiling more comfortably, but an official, known unofficially as a shusher, indicated that they should rise. He and other shushers moved through the crowd of upturned faces whispering “shush” and “silenzio,” reminding us that the Sistine Chapel is a place of worship and not an art gallery.

Friday Reads: March 2018

March 30, 2018 Reviews

Curated by SARAH WHELAN

Friday Reads is like a box of chocolates: there’s something for everyone, even the weirdos who read scripts! This month, sample an autobiographical novel, a collection of love poems, and a modernist play.

Recommendations: A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz, Oceanic by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, The Visit by Friedrich Dürrenmatt.

March 2018 Poetry Feature: Print Preview

March 30, 2018 Poetry

In March we welcome three poets new to our pages; all three have work forthcoming in the print journal, as well.

JILL MCDONOUGH

Zero Slave Teeth

On the radio I hear about George Washington’s teeth.
A guest says what do you think his teeth were and a host
says wood. I’ve read about Waterloo teeth, how we prowled
battlefields, plucked teeth from young French corpses,
wired them up to make fresh rich people mouths.

Ask a Local: Katie Cortese, Lubbock, Texas

March 29, 2018 Interviews

With KATIE CORTESE

Your Name: Katie Cortese

Current City or Town: Lubbock, Texas

How Long Have You Lived here: 5 years

Three Words to Describe the Climate: Sunny, windy, dusty

Best time of the year to visit: Every season in Lubbock has its challenges, but I like it best in either May or September when everything is green and flowering, the hottest days are still either in front of us or past, and the wind is slightly less intense (though it never really goes away).

Riding with Wolfman

March 28, 2018 Dispatches

By LEATH TONINO

Sawatch Range of Colorado

I’d been backpacking solo for twenty days in the mountains of Colorado, only a biography of Mozart for company, when my feet finally got the message up to my thumb that they were tired—so blistered, and achy, and sun-deprived and tired. My thumb, being a crafty little digit, waited until the trail crossed a road, then sprang into action with all the springiness a thumb can muster. One minute I was a resolved nature pilgrim, the next a common drifter hitching a ride to junk food.

What pulled up beside me almost instantaneously was not so much a Suburban as a rumbling patchwork of rust and mismatched panels. The tailpipe, or the little left of it, screamed a warning of danger, but its cries fell on my feet’s deaf ears. I stepped to the lowered window, thinking of ice cream and nothing besides ice cream.

Sample Lesson Plan for World Literature: Arabic Literature in Translation

March 21, 2018 Lesson Plans, Teach

Learn more about teaching The Common and request a free sample issue.

World Literature: Arabic Literature in Translation

Using Issue 11: Tajdeed

Adapted from Marilyn Sides, Senior Lecturer and Director of Creative Writing, in the Department of English and Creative Writing, Wellesley College

1) Read: Mohammed Rabie’s “Burdens,” Muhammad Khudayyir’s “The Hush Void,” and Mahmoud al-Rahabi’s “The Passing Carts,” as well as the “Contributor Notes” for these authors and their translators.

Me Matas, Te Mato

March 14, 2018 Dispatches

By AMANDA GOMEZ

San Luis de la Paz, Mexico

I. Ver

We stayed with your mother in a tenement made of metal and painted stucco during the high holy days of August, the little chapel of La Virgencita a vision from our bedroom window. Flanked by powerlines and pigeons, its white façade projecting shadows on pedestrians as they strolled past. Each day we woke before dawn to sip bitter coffee and watch men in stiff robes ring the chapel bells, tracking their steps as they ascended the tower. Together they tugged the ropes to rouse the townspeople—to check they were alive.

Shopping

March 10, 2018 Fiction

By JON LEWIS-KATZ

I am sitting outside the dressing rooms exactly where my mother left me ten or fifteen minutes ago, after kissing me goodbye and dissolving into the Macy’s crowd, when the white man who is my father appears. On the couch to my left is what my mother would likely refer to as a whole heap of clothes, little kid shirts and little kid pants that have been discarded by shoppers before me and left in a state of complete and utter confusion. On the couch to my right is a girl who, I have learned, has reached the fourth grade. We have known each other for barely ten minutes. Yet we have formed the kind of immediate friendship that is possible only between children who are yet to discover that even at its beginning every path is an ending one.

Photos of LitFest 2018

March 7, 2018 News and Events

More than 1,700 bibliophiles gathered on campus March 1-3 for LitFest 2018, the College’s third annual literary festival that included conversations and book signings with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz, 2017 National Book Award finalists Carmen Maria Machado and Min Jin Lee, 2017 National Book Award winner and Amherst professor Masha Gessen, and acclaimed Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, among others. Additional activities included master classes, a poetry slam, panel conversations and tours of the Emily Dickinson Museum. The Common, the Center for Humanistic Inquiry, and the Emily Dickinson Museum partner with the College on this event.
Click here for the full write-up and more photos.