AG2023_1055822a or the rectangle is hers


The Art of the Impersonal Essay, Zadie Smith. (New Yorker)

An English teacher took me aside and drew a rectangle on a piece of paper, placed a shooting arrow on each corner of the rectangle, plus one halfway along the horizontal top line, and a final arrow, in the same position, down below. “Six points,” this teacher said. “Going clockwise, first arrow is the introduction, last arrow is the conclusion. Got that?” I got that. He continued, “Second arrow is you basically developing whatever you said in the intro. Third arrow is you either developing the point further or playing devil’s advocate. Fourth arrow, you’re starting to see the finish line, so start winding down, start summarizing. Fifth arrow, you’re one step closer to finished, so repeat the earlier stuff but with variations. Sixth arrow, you’re on the home straight: you’ve reached the conclusion. Bob’s your uncle. That’s really all there is to it.” I had the sense I was being let into this overworked teacher’s inner sanctum, that he had drawn this little six-arrowed rectangle himself, upon his own exam papers, long ago. “Oh, and remember to put the title of the essay in that box. That’ll keep you focussed.”


Dead or Alive, Essays, by Zadie Smith. Penguin Press.


Andrew Marvell, The Garden

AG2016_1020344 or i swear by all flowers


since feeling is first
who pays any attention 
to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate 
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

E.E. Cummings

AG2022_1110637a perpetuates this habit

AG2022_1110637a

Colonisation had sought to exclude the natives from politics, and Africans were viewed as objects that could be destroyed, animals who should be trained or children that needed firm leadership. The essence of neocolonialism was to perpetuate this habit: the African, forever immature, must not venture into politics.
The Cameroon war : a history of French neocolonialism in Africa / by Thomas Deltombe, Jacob Tatsitsa and Manuel Domergue ; translated by David Broder.

AG2025_1177610b or theatrum orbis terrarum


Edwidge Danticat joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “Two Men Arrive in a Village,” by Zadie Smith. (New Yorker) (PRX)


Sarah Bejerano. Cargo. Rialta.

Casi al final del prefacio de su Atlas de islas remotas, Judith Schalansky escribe: Los cartógrafos deberían reivindicar su oficio como un verdadero arte poético y los atlas como un género literario de belleza máxima; en definitiva, su arte es digno merecedor de la primera denominación que recibieron los mapas: Theatrum orbis terrarum [Teatro del mundo]. Si hubiera un atlas del mundo en la fotografía cubana, sería la obra de Sarah Bejerano. Si hubiera un atlas de la poesía en la fotografía cubana, sería la obra de Sarah Bejerano:

—¿Hay música en tus fotos?

—Hay música en mi cabeza, todo el tiempo. No puedo vivir sin música. Normalmente organizo mi vida por canciones, y mis fotos son lo mismo. Todas las series que hago tienen bandas sonoras, que muchas veces se conforman a la hora de realizarlas y otras viene cuando las visualizo posteriormente. No podría enmarcarlas en un género musical u otro, porque mis listas de reproducciones van desde Irakere hasta Rammstein, desde Vivaldi hasta Elvis Manuel.

—¿Crees en Dios?

—No, ¡por Dios!

Legna Rodríguez Iglesias with Sara Bejerano, 2021.

AG2025_1177596a or Aquí confluimos hacia la única estrella


“Of course, I am not K, but I find myself uncannily identified with his predicament. For in the letter you have sent you and your offices have informed me only that you have sent “a file or report related to alleged antisemitic incidents” that includes my name. Two aspects of this communication stand out to anyone who has read Kafka’s work. The first is that you imply, without stating it, that I have been accused of antisemitism or that my name is associated with an incident of that kind. But you are also actually more careful since you say that the incident of antisemitic harassment or discrimination is “alleged,” which means simply that the allegation was neither reviewed nor adjudicated but left to stand on its own.”

Judith Butler to David Robinson, in response to the University of California, Berkeley informing 160 students, faculty, and staff that files containing their names were forwarded to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in connection to its investigation of antisemitism on college and university campuses. via The Nation.


Aquí confluimos hacia la única estrella.

Volquémonos amado mío,

dejemos caer los remos

hasta donde la noche no existe.

Here we converge toward the only star.

Let’s fall in, love of mine,

let’s drop our oars

down to where night doesn’t exist.

Lacao, Rosabetty Muñoz, translated By Claudia Nuñez de Ibieta

AG2025_1177596b


ECHO DELAY REVERB. Art américain et pensées francophones, Naomi Beckwith et Elvan Zabunyan (dir.), coéd. Palais de Tokyo (17 octobre 2025) Editions B42.


[Arundhati Roy] writes … on a paper napkin for her friend to hold on to, formulating with that rare and exultant combination of passion and rigor what success really means:

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

via The Marginalian

Also. It was a sudden revelation (Woolf)