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Who bombed Frankfurter Buchmesse?
['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 245th article in the new series that began in...
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The most pernicious human shield
White phosphorus raining on Gaza['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 246th article in...
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Let us now march to the battleground of words
['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 247th article in the new series that began in...
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When the earth closes upon us...
['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 248th article in the new series that began in...
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Re-weaving lives and love
['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 249th article in the new series that began in...
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Let's plant words in cracks and craters
['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 250th article in the new series that began in...
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Following children and their smiles
www.compassion.orgA song wandered through the yellows of October and through random conversations in a coffee house. It came from a different century and a different war. It is from one of my favourite...
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Let us write beautiful poetry
It was in early 1986 that I first encountered Ivan Shadr's bronze sculpture of 1927 titled 'The Cobblestone is a Weapon of the Proletariat.' It was on the front page of a newspaper whose name I cannot...
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How Grolier Poetry writes 'Harvard Square'
There was no ‘Harvard’ in Cambridge, Massachusetts before September 8, 1636. Indeed, at that time, there was no Cambridge either, at least not in the state of Massachusetts. Apparently it was settled...
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Let us take a deep breath now...
Questions are the respiratory system of children. I doubt if anyone thought of this before or, even if the thought crossed the mind, wrote it as elegantly. This is why I find John Freeman’s Dictionary...
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Ahmed Issa, fearless and audacious in Gaza
I last heard from my friend and brother Ahmed Issa on Tuesday the 24th of October, 2023. I sent him a link to an article I had written titled ‘Let us write beautiful poetry.’ He replied with a heart...
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A breathless hush at the close
Cricket fans may have heard of Sir Henry Newbolt’s oft-quoted poem where a cricketing metaphor is used to offer courage to a soldier in desperate circumstances. They may have read at least the first...
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The virtues of unemployability
Sometimes people ask me what I do. And when such questions are asked, I say, with pride and a wide grin, ‘I am an unemployed graduate.’ I add, ‘for the eighth time.’ It is not true though. I am...
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Amherst: silent, rural, poetic and serendipitous
I’ve spent the past few days in Amherst, Massachusetts, with my friend, the poet John Hennessy. He teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and lives a few...
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Friendships that keep friends permanently at 16
Eraj Basnayake, Professor of Mathematics, Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York, was in my class from grades one through six. While there were some students in the sixth grade class who had...
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The scattered archives of art and protest
There’s an exhibition titled ‘Art, protest and the archives’ hosted by the Beinecke Rare Books & Manuscript Library of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. It will continue until January 7,...
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Writing magical pieces about something beautiful when time permits
I received a request this morning: ’Write a magical piece when time permits, about something beautiful.’ It reminded me of a poem in which Pablo Neruda may have responded to a similar request. In I...
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An Aussie broke an SL heard in Ind over Afg
Don’t get me wrong, I have been a big fan of Glenn Maxwell ever since he lit up IPL 2014 compiling 552 runs inclusive of 36 sixers for Kings XI Punjab at a strike rate of 187.75 along with David Miller...
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Reclaiming the everyday with solidarities of tender fury
I am eternally grateful to my friend Mahendra Silva for urging me to watch the movie The Life of David Gale. It happened when he quoted from a lecture delivered by the principal character, played by...
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The world shall not be emptied of poetry
In the nightmare of the dark All the dogs of Europe barkand...Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human faceThe above lines are taken from a section of a poem that begins thus:Earth receives an...
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