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Barbed Wire

Nathan Hoks Matter: A (somewhat) monthly journal of political poetry and commentary
Chicago poet Nathan Hoks shows a keen understanding of bad things going on in our times and then takes it all a surreal step beyond or maybe not.

The Last of Christopher Hitchens

Terry Eagleton The Guardian (UK)
The last posthumous collection of Christopher Hitchens's essays we are likely to see, the book under review shows the incomparable polemicist moved from being a practicing Trotskyist (though he never practiced enough to get good at it) to cosying up to the Washington neocons.

Bearman - Review of Oscar Contender "Revenant"

Christopher Benfey New York Review of Books
Despite its flimsy historical underpinnings, The Revenant is actually a dream-film throughout. There are sequences—like the improbable dive over a cliff into the waiting arms of a huge tree, or the abandoned cathedral equipped with a Baroque crucifix and a silently swinging bell—where you aren’t quite sure, and you don’t much mind, if what you’re watching is meant to be “really” happening to Hugh Glass or just transpiring in his (or perhaps Iñárritu’s) head.

Food Trends for 2016

Chris Urban Restaurant News
In the ever-evolving restaurant industry, trend forecasts range from menu tweaks to technological and social upheavals.

What's New

Jill McDonough AGNI
For the novelty fetishists, everything's new, new, new. Boston-based poet Jill McDonough shines a light on what's happening, what's coming. Only maybe not.

I am French

Jeremy Harding London Review of Books
Were the mass 'We are Charlie' demonstrations in France in support of 'We are France,' in the best republican tradition or a shot against Muslim immigrants signifying that 'You are not?' Polymath Emmanuel Todd argues that the demonstrations, like much of Charlie Hebdo's satire, were not so much attacks on toxic religious ideology as broadly anti-Muslim and anti-Arab, indicating that the vaunted French secularism has lost its solidaristic component, 'equality.'

Thank You to the Readers of Portside Culture

Portside
The Portside moderators send our heartfelt thanks to our readers, for coming through in response to our annual appeal! We don't do a lot of fundraising -- just this annual appeal. We are grateful, and gratified, that the response allows us to keep to this bare minimum. Again, many thanks from the left side of the ship - the portside. Full speed ahead in the new year.

After Outrage Publisher Pulls Happy Slaves Children’s Book

Demetria Lucas D'Oyley The Root
A children's book showing happy slaves in the South was pulled off the market last weekend after a major controversy about its contents. This is just the latest flareup in an ongoing dispute about books aimed at children that show slavery and racist subordination in a positive light.

PBSs Mercy Street Is The Downton Abbey Replacement You’ve Been Waiting For

Alyssa Rosenberg The Washington Post
“The Civil War truly was a time when women, for the lack of a better word, came into the workplace,” says PBS chief programming executive Beth Hoppe. “It was also a time when medicine was undergoing huge changes.” Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who plays a nurse, said that part of what she appreciated about “Mercy Street” was getting a part in a project where women find each other in conflict over power and intellectual traditions, rather than simply for the sake of drama.