“Dear possible, and if you drown, Nothing is lost, unless my empty hands Claim the conjectured corpse Of empty water—a legal vengeance On my own earnestness.”

Open our latest edition to learn more about two Kansas rivermen who were said to have perished in pursuit of giant catfish, why the pigment black has held such allure for painters, and how one anesthesiologist learned to expect the worst.

“Wrecking Ball,” Rick Bass’s latest book, is “a beautifully composed and deeply insightful longform essay dealing … with race, friendship, God, and football,” writes Steve Yarbrough in his review.

J. Malcolm Garcia’s journalism takes us into the heart of a homeless encampment without “shade, water, shelter, or any kind of supervision,” where some are lucky enough to own a tent and others sleep “on the ground with only their clothes for a blanket.”

Our Autumn 2025 issue has arrived! Highlights include J. Malcolm Garcia’s visit to an Oregon tent encampment; Kristin Idaszak’s look at the link between horseshoe crabs and the human heart; Steve Yarbrough’s profile of writer James Whitehead; and much more!

There’s a whiff of George Plimpton in Rick Bass’s decision to play football at age 60, but Bass’s descriptions of the experience in his new book are very different in temperament.

Last month, David Lehman prompted poems inspired by Emily Brontë, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Barnabe Googe, and more.

A bird in the hand is not just worth two in the bush. This week, Clellan Coe quickly discovers she has no idea what to do with the duckling she caught while walking her dogs.

For Doug, who lives at a Portland homeless encampment, simply taking two pills a day can seem like the most daunting challenge. Although Doug’s world is uncertain and dark, those volunteering to help him and his neighbors are trying to make it a little less lonely.

What on earth was Rick Bass thinking? At the age of 60, the celebrated writer of fiction and essays decided to join a semi-pro football team—the Texas Express—and compete in one of the most violent sports there is, against and beside men who were at least half his age.

For the next installment of Next Line Please, David Lehman proposes reversing the usual poem-first, title-second process and using one of his ready-made titles as a jumping-off point.

In this week’s Asturias Days, Clellan Coe meets a lonely duckling. “Catching it had taken several tries,” she writes. “Not because it was difficult, exactly, but because you hesitate in that moment—your body unsure whether this is something one really does: pounce.”

The myriad problems associated with homelessness continue to dominate the headlines. But what is it actually like to live in a tent encampment? In our Autumn cover story, J. Malcolm Garcia introduces us to the J Street Lot in Grants Pass, Oregon.

As Pablo Picasso (allegedly) said, “Good artists borrow; great artists steal.” Such was the motivation behind last month’s “Next Line, Please” prompt, in which David Lehman offered a handful of “stolen lines” to his intrepid poets, encouraging them to pick one and “run with it.”

What was David Brown’s night of baseball about? It was “about karma, luck, circles closed, optimism, and generosity,” he writes. And a “losing game that was a big win.”

“I think it’s just really beautiful to understand art and home as being so intertwined in the same way that I understand cloth and family to be intertwined,” says artist Cici Osias.

With baseball season entering its final stretch, David Brown takes us to Baltimore’s Camden Yards, where the principal attraction on a warm July night isn’t necessarily the underwhelming Orioles but rather the ballpark giveaway: Hawaiian shirts.

Thomas Gray wrote “Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes” in 1747 when Horace Walpole asked him for an epitaph to commemorate his cat.

Fifty years ago, Paul Theroux published “The Great Railway Bazaar,” a book that “dazzlingly lifted travel writing out of its midcentury doldrums,” as Thomas Swick writes.

Studying Penelope Fitzgerald, Muriel Spark, and Anita Brookner has led Jessica Francis Kane to wonder if “there is some pattern to be discerned, some golden ratio” of motherhood and work—especially as it seems Fitzgerald is the only one who succeeded at both.

Of all the freebies on offer at Camden Yards, the Hawaiian shirt is arguably the most coveted. The trick? You’ve got to be among the first 15,000 fans to arrive to receive one.

“The Great Railway Bazaar,” writes Thomas Swick, “is also a book that frequently makes you stop and underline a sentence simply because of how brilliantly it captures a look, a scene … a precious detail, a perfect word, an unexpected finish.”

This past year, textile artist Cici Osias turned her attention to quilting because of its role on the Underground Railroad, where quilting codes signified safe houses for enslaved people seeking freedom.

Socrates, not unlike the Buddha, insisted on subjecting local culture, codes, and customs to rigorous examination, leaving “no established opinion unchallenged.” A new book argues that their similarities don’t end there.

Growing up in Maryland’s Baltimore County, Cici Osias—who is of African-American, Haitian, Congolese, and Nigerian ancestry—was surrounded by African art and traditions.

Paul Theroux was a novelist by trade, and, as he set off from London on a journey that would take him across continents, he used fiction techniques to bring a wide cast of characters to life.

“Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes” by Thomas Gray has resonated with many cat lovers—including William Blake, who illustrated the poem just before the turn of the century. @tate.bsky.social exhibited these watercolors in 1971.

“Long ago, @elizmccrack.bsky.social … said, ‘We all write with everything we have and for some of us that includes children, and for some of us it does not,’” Jessica Francis Kane writes. “I believe this. But if I can refresh Fitzgerald’s literary legacy … I’d like to.”

While Cici Osias was growing up, artwork from the African diaspora hung on her relatives’ walls, and she wore Nigerian textiles, or “aso ebi,” to family functions. During her college years, Osias delved deeper into the history and creation of Nigerian textiles.

David Brown’s recent summer evening turned out to be memorable for reasons beyond the freebie that brought him to a ball game: friendships and chance encounters that rendered the game’s outcome irrelevant.

Paul Theroux’s “The Great Railway Bazaar” led to an all-too-brief flourishing of literary travel writing, which saw the publication of seminal works by Bruce Chatwin, Jonathan Raban, Isabel Hilton, Colin Thubron, and many others.

One of Cici Osias’s quilted textile pieces is currently part of a group exhibition, “Nothing is Fixed,” at the Old Stone House in Brooklyn through October 13.

For this week’s Read Me a Poem, Amanda Holmes presents “Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes” by Thomas Gray.

“For reasons I cannot fathom, Penelope Fitzgerald’s literary reputation seems to be lagging behind those of her English contemporaries, namely Muriel Spark and Anita Brookner,” writes Jessica Francis Kane.

Gotama Buddha exhorted his followers not to accept things as they are, but “to imagine something new, whether in the sphere of politics, work, relationships, art, or philosophy”—sounding, a new book argues, more than a little like Socrates.

“Her conscious tail her joy declar’d; The fair round face, the snowy beard, The velvet of her paws; Her coat, that with the tortoise vies, Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes, She saw; and purred applause.” —Thomas Gray

On paper, the late Penelope Fitzgerald’s career is the stuff of literary dreams. She was nominated for the Booker Prize three times, winning once, and won the National Book Critics Circle Award, boosting her fame in the United States.

Gotama Buddha and Socrates were contemporaries in the fifth century BCE, and although they never met, their lives and messages exhibit compelling parallels.

Multimedia artist Anne Labovitz interviewed health care workers about how they incorporate creativity in their careers, and “it was wonderful to hear the level of commitment to their patients and passion for doing excellent work.”

“My older brother is instructive to a fault. My younger brother, self-sufficient to a fault. I’m forgetful to a fault—easily thrown off when there’s too much happening around me,” writes Clellan Coe.

The older we get, writes Costică Brădățan, “the more spiritually ossified we become.” We need things to challenge our assumptions, to rouse us from our spiritual slumber: “That’s what awakenings are for.”

“our bouncing baby boy, thank God and knock on wood, is well, looks just like his folks, like a kitten in a basket like the tots in every other family album.”—Wisława Szymborska (excerpt from “Hitler’s First Photograph”)

Most years, Clellan Coe travels to Durango, Colorado, to bake a cake for her stepmother’s birthday. This year the family had to improvise around busy schedules.

The cultural and religious traditions of East and West are often treated separately, as if emanating from entirely different worlds. Yet in his new book, “Buddha, Socrates, and Us: Ethical Living in Uncertain Times,” Stephen Batchelor bridges the gap.

Wisława Szymborska compiled her poetry on the aftermath of war into a 1993 collection, “The End and the Beginning,” and won the Nobel Prize for Literature three years later.

This version of “Hitler’s First Photograph” was translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak.

The poet Natan Yonatan was born in Ukraine in 1923, just two years before his family emigrated to Palestine. As a young man, Yonatan joined Kibbutz Sarid, which was formed by immigrants from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union.

The local veterinary practice in Asturias has an open floor plan, and despite her ailing cat, Clellan Coe felt at ease: “I like the office, the relaxed attitude of the vets, the open consulting-room door, the way everyone smiles at everyone else’s pet.”

For her recent exhibition in North Dakota, Anne Labovitz interviewed over 50 health care workers. “I’m interested in how something really personal and intimate can become something monumental,” she says.

Natan Yonatan was a prolific poet, but his best-known collection is perhaps “Stones in the Darkness.” From this collection, Amanda Holmes presents “The Girl in the Ray of Darkness” for this week’s Read Me a Poem.