Essays

Essays

In Pursuit of Clancy Sigal

A writer’s radical life
Todd Gitlin
Todd Gitlin speaks with with I.F. Stone at a demonstration against nuclear weapons, Washington D.C., 1962.
The Moment

Strangers in Our Own Homes

The pandemic’s xenophobic discourse
Divya Victor
Books

How to Continue

The poetry of HIV/AIDS four decades on
Sam Huber
Essays

Suicide in Fiction, Reconsidered

Why we need stories about living after a suicide attempt
Morgan Thomas
Essays

Now Is Pretty Creepy

On Miranda July
Min Li Chan
Collage with images from social media
Essays

The Brink of Destruction

Revisiting John Ashbery’s “Soonest Mended”
Edward Hirsch
Two cartoon characters superimposed onto painting of a storm.

Browse

Essays

A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

The Aquarists

Life, death, and fish
Seth Lerer
November 1, 2017
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
Essays

Turning the Soil

Cultivating our gardens in times of trouble
Jane Costlow
November 1, 2017
A weathered poster of Chelsea Manning
Essays

Whistleblower, Traitor, Soldier, Queer?

The truth of Chelsea Manning
Lida Maxwell
November 1, 2017
A photograph of a train station in Russia at night.
Journals

A Journey Across Siberia

Penetrating the Soviet Union in 1967
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
July 1, 2015
Graphic with loaves of bread and water bottles on a black and orange background. Illustration by Laura Padilla Castellanos
Essays

Loaf or Hot-Water Bottle

Closely Translating Proust
Lydia Davis
April 1, 2004
Black and white photo of light coming through windows in the apse of San Vitale in Ravenna with mosaics. Courtesy N.P. Sullo.
Essays

Days of 1952

On the rapture of experiencing art in solitude
James Merrill
April 1, 1992
An abstract print by Jacob van Heemskerck.
Essays

Naming, Being, and Black Experience

Yale’s first Black professor on the presence or absence of names, their status and their scope.
Michael G. Cooke
December 1, 1977
Detail of a microchip
Essays

Creativity, Poetic Language, and the Computer

What's distinctly human about writing a poem?
Marie Borroff
June 1, 1971
An old photograph of a churchyard cemetery. Courtesy The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
Essays

A Journal of the Plague

The 1918 Influenza
Francis Russell
December 1, 1958
Blue stamps from WWII ration book
Essays

Note on the Home Front

I shall never forget that first winter of gasoline rationing
Eve Riehle
September 1, 1945