News & Events | Page 277 | The Common | A Modern Sense of Place: Stories, Poems, Essays & Images

The Four Times of Day by William Hogarth

April 1, 2013 Issue 05, Issue 05 Art

William Hogarth (1697–1764), the eighteenth-century English artist known for his satirical views of contemporary life, first published The Four Times of Day engravings in 1738, based on paintings completed two years earlier. Although some of Hogarth’s other series profess a moral, the intent of these works was to portray humorous caricatures of contemporary  figures. The images are rich in detail, providing a glimpse into the world of 1730s London.

Ammoun (2013)

March 31, 2013 News and Events

Ammoun, the top news website in Jordan, features The Common‘s collaboration with Hisham Bustani.

Tahawolat (2013)

March 31, 2013 News and Events

Tahawolat, a Lebanese culture and politics website, highlights Issue 06’s publication of stories from Hisham Bustani.

Riffle (2013)

March 31, 2013 News and Events

Riffle covers The Common’s second annual celebration of place in NYC on “Riffle World Literature”.

On the Near-Future Novelist: Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich

March 29, 2013 Essays

By SCOTT GEIGER

In two sequential hurricane seasons, the Earth has mounted two solid runs at (re)producing the plot of Nathaniel Rich’s Odds Against Tomorrow. It’s good Rich’s second novel found print this spring. After Irene and Sandy, there’s this spooky feeling that it’s only a matter of time before greater disaster strikes.

Before the Storm

March 27, 2013 Dispatches

By GEOFF BENDECK

The police commander of Quinindé showed up dead in the province of Manabí yesterday, pounds of cocaine and money littering his car. He died, slumped over the steering wheel, his body blistered with bullets. There is the menace of drugs, poverty, and gangs that looms over this city where the two rivers meet. Lately, anonymous flyers have appeared threatening vigilante justice—threatening to take back the town. “We know who you are thieves, murders, gang members,” it says. “And we will bring you a taste of your own poison.”

Collecting Time

March 26, 2013 Essays

By NAILA MOREIRA

Today, I am setting boots to snow. In my hands I hold a pair of shiny new binoculars. They’re my first new pair since the very first I bought, at age 12, with my $100 of babysitting money. For twenty years I carried those, and the trusty little things never failed me. These new ones cost a little more, yet even with their bright lenses, I’m thwarted by a golden-crowned kinglet. The tiny bird nips from one branch to the next, too quick to view for more than an instant as it seeks some minuscule source of nourishment among the needles.

March 2013 Poetry Feature

March 23, 2013 Poetry

This month’s poetry feature showcases work from new books by our contributors.

Instead of Flowers

March 20, 2013 Dispatches

By MICHAEL CAYLO-BARADI

Usually 4 p.m. glares on my windshield as I head to the Hollywood Hills Forest Lawn Memorial Park. I am 75 miles per hour on the 134, maybe more. Others fly by me, impatient. The temptation to catch up to them is strong, as always. But I stay below the eighties, as though the seventies are the right glide, on Lenny Kravitz tunes. At the exit, flower vendors on foot wave roses and chrysanthemums. Their nearest competition is the flower shop at the gate, less than a mile away. You’d think they’d sell for bargain. But I buy a bunch or two anyway. It beats walking to the shop, and ringing for someone to come out when you’re ready to pay.

Masks, Memory, and Memoir from the Ivory Coast

March 18, 2013 Essays, In House

By JULIA LICHTBLAU

“Salt,” I said to my brother, pointing to the white crystals sprinkled on the bookcase in our late father’s home office. “At least, I think it’s salt. If it were sugar, there’d be ants everywhere, right?”

Marc swiped his finger across a shelf and gamely stuck his finger in his mouth. “Yep, salt,” he said.

After moving my mother to an assisted living, I was packing up the remaining possessions in her apartment, including my parents’ African art collection.

I’d first noticed the salt in a closet where the overflow of masks, statues, carved wooden utensils, and other objects were kept. They had bought them in Côte d’Ivoire and surrounding countries in the late 1960s, when we lived in Abidjan, then the capital. My father, a Foreign Service officer, was posted there. It wasn’t hard to guess who had done the sprinkling. The ladies who looked after my mother were all from West and Central Africa. To someone, these objects, which my parents collected for their beauty or cultural interest, must have had a spiritual significance.