Discovering Tarkovsky upended my attempt to build a coherent, if radically reduced, worldview post-Iraq. Ten years after leaving the military I found myself replaying certain scenes from his Solaris and Stalker well into the early morning hours, with no thought to plot, or social relevance, just the sound and absence and the want and the curious, sacred fullness that followed these unanchored gaps in experience.
(nonfiction)
“So, I’m not saying one’s better than the other, but maybe because [Iraq] had so many wars, they put people first. In our culture, we put profit first. Our whole geopolitical conduct has now become quite transactional. If you say [Trump] is a mandate from the American people, then that’s saying something about the values of voters,” Alex Poppe tells ACM.
But those who press the grapes now, / who toil from morning till night, / they’ve disowned us…
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The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“They had traveled through miles and miles of empty land in the dark, a vast empty space between national borders.”
(fiction)
Another Chicago Magazine 