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Joseph Brodsky—the Joseph addressed in the epigraph—once said that when you hear Derek Walcott’s voice, “the world unravels.” It is a voice concomitant with the sea, and by connection, history.

I write in time to break 
into timelessness.

Is there such a thing as an easy situation with William Faulkner? His name is synonymous with complexity. It pervades his style, his storylines, and the format of his novels. Interacting with the public, the man obfuscated, exaggerated, and...

Underwater, I opened my eyes. Bubbles moved like abacus beads across the hairs between my legs.

“You stay down there longer than the other women,” said Penina Sussman, who was watching me from the tile when I emerged. She held out a towel.

In Houston, undocumented immigrants have access to some of the nation’s best health care. Could this be a model for the rest of the country?

You borrow a book from a friend, knowing full well that you’ll never return it. You sleep with another friend’s spouse. You drink too much at a party, then drive home, merrily exceeding the speed limit.

we love them too much 
to see them—

No, not insurance. What I
meant to say was “double identity,”

as in Boutros Boutros-Ghali,
William Carlos Williams, Sirhan Sirhan,

It may sound incomprehensible—senseless, Constance Garnett would have put it, as she did in her translation of The Brothers Karamazov—but while the rest of the world may dread the return of the prolonged hostile stare-down known in the last...