Scorched earth Scorched earth used to be a military tactic — Samson caught three hundred foxes, and took firebrands, and put a firebrand in the midst between two tails, sending them through enemy fields — but what if nature out-flames the foxes? What if floods engulf those waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? Hosing down used to […]
Tag: Poetry
Magic and advertising
This is to alert BrownPundit readers to a series I’ve begun on Zenpundit, my other punditry-posting place. It’s about Ioan Couliano’s argument in his book Eros and Magic in the Renaissance that the Renaissance art of Magic was essentially a matter of conjuring desire in the recipient by means of visual imagery, and that the […]
W.H. Auden on Partition
Since on the “Brown Roundup” thread, there was some spirited discussion about baby Prince Louis and his being named after Lord Mountbatten, I was reminded of W.H. Auden’s poem “Partition”. It’s a short poem, so I’m just going to copy it out from my edition of Auden’s Collected Poems (Edited by Edward Mendelson). The poem […]
Aqlima. Daughter of Adam
A translation (by Ruchira Paul) of Pakistani Feminist poet Fahmida Riaz’s poem Aqlima (daughter of Adam and Eve) Audio in the poet’s own voice. (mislabeled as another poem). Aklima jo Habil aur Kabil ki maa jaani hai maa jaani, magar muqtalif muqtalif beech raano ke aur pistanon ki ubhaar mein aur apne pait ke andar […]