Lost Without Translation: Fady Joudah on the Poetry of Ghassan Zaqtan

Fady Joudah first became associated with Yale University Press in 2007 when he was awarded the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize by then-judge Louise Glück, and the subsequent publication of his first volume of poetry, The Earth in the Attic, in April 2008. He returns to our list this spring as translator of Palestinian [...]

Architectural Space in Hitler’s Berlin

Seventy years after the end of WWII, we tend to associate Hitler and the German Reich with destruction. Yet, as Hitler rose to power in the 1920s and 1930s, construction was a key part of his political agenda, a fact that Thomas Friedrich makes clear in Hitler’s Berlin: Abused City, translated by Stewart Spencer. In [...]

Curator Helen Evans Tours the Objects of Byzantium and Islam

Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition (7th – 9th Century), the revelatory exhibition now on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (accompanied by a rich catalogue of the same title), was recently lauded in the New York Times, praised specifically for “offering a soothing picture of artistic continuity.”  The massive undertaking demonstrates the interconnectedness [...]

Slow Lightning and Eduardo Corral: Yale’s First Latino Younger Poet

The first poem Eduardo C. Corral ever wrote was a response to Beowulf in rhyming couplets. Corral’s high school English teacher, who assigned the poem, thought his response was so good, she read it aloud to her other classes. More than a decade later, Corral’s poetry is winning even higher praise. In the last twelve [...]

Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion

In 2004, Zaha Hadid became the first woman ever to win the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor. Last year, Hadid, an Iraqi-born architect widely known for her dynamic and innovative work, was invited to join the committee of judges for the Pritzker. If that is not evidence enough of the ever-increasing influence of Hadid’s design [...]

John Guare Announces the 2012 Yale Drama Series Winner: Clarence Coo’s Beautiful Province

Clarence Coo has been chosen by playwright John Guare as the winner of the 2012 Yale Drama Series for his play Beautiful Province.  Selected from over 1100 plays submitted from 24 countries, Beautiful Province, as the winner of this year’s Yale Drama Series Award, will be published by Yale University Press.   On Tuesday, September 18, [...]

The Amorality of the State: An Excerpt from Why Niebuhr Matters

Famously cited as one of Obama’s favorite philosophers, midcentury religious and political thinker Reinhold Niebuhr offered “a political realism that refuses to abandon high moral principles to short-term practical compromises.” In Why Niebuhr Matters, from Yale University Press’s Why X Matters Series, author Charles Lemert explores the continued relevance of this morally demanding realism—and the [...]

Lest We Forget: Poems, Nature, Food, and Keeping Your Day Job

Sarah Underwood— Reading poetry normally does not make me hungry, but after “Lake of Little Birds,” poet Katherine Larson had me ready for “[s]wordish/ drizzled with virgin oil, rubbed with/ mint and saffron”…and several other dishes. The 2010 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize uses her experience as a biologist to compose [...]

Birthday Party in Thomas Jefferson’s Garden

“I have often thought that if heaven had given me choice of my position and calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the productions of the garden.” – Thomas Jefferson (b. April 13, 1743 – d. July 4, 1826)   In 1811, Thomas [...]

Introducing the Margellos World Republic of Letters Website

Marcel Proust said: “The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes, in seeing the universe with the eyes of another, of hundreds of others, in seeing the hundreds of universes that each of them sees.” The Margellos World Republic of Letters series and its companion website [...]