This Week's Writing 4/18/26

Rilke! Guard cat! and everything else I published this week.

Fierce kitten guarding power outlets says, “week done!”

Why is he guarding power outlets? I don’t know cats are mysterious.

And! if you’d like to help feed the mysterious kitty, consider becoming a paid subscriber? It’s $5/month, $50/year.

Here’s what I published this week.

Politics

We lost the war with Iran. (Public Notice)

Orban concedes; the GOP often does too. (EIH)

Why Swalwell but not Trump? (EIH)

The twilight of Chuck Schumer (EIH)

Cultural criticism

Critic Megan O’Grady writes about art as a reason for being alive. (Observer.com)

Send Help and the joy of power reversals. (EIH)

Poetry

A translation/adaptation of a Rilke sonnet. (Synchronized Chaos)

Archaic Torso of Apollo

After Rilke

He has no head. He has no eyes
to pin us with his godhead. But his torso
is itself a gaze in which there grows
from inside, like a covered lamp, a fire.

Without that rising surge, divinity
would not ravish you, nor would a lip
trace the gentle curve of thigh and hip
to the shadowed center of fertility.

Without it, the stone would seem a broken thing,
chipped, cracked, dead, a stone,
and would not glisten like a wolf’s dark mane,

and would not from its remnants blaze and singe
you like a god. Of all its parts, there is not one
that does not see you. Your life must change.

From the archives

Track of the week