Blog
Filter By:
Advocacy • Analysis • Blog • Commentary • Drama • Essay • Event • Feature • Fiction • Graphic Narrative • Interview • Memoir • News • Obituary • Open Letter • Poetry • Press Release • Profile
Browse By Series:
PEN Poetry Series • Prison Writing • The PEN Ten Interviews • Illustrated PEN • Pen Pals • The PEN World
Browse By Email Subscription:
PEN America News • Educational Censorship News • Works of Justice
A Fahrenheit 450 Story
This is a Fahrenheit 450 story, only hot enough to burn my butt, no blazing tale of the censorship wars. While heroic writers speaking truth to power face secret… More
Dracula Is a Pain in the Neck and So Is “Self-censorship”
My brother’s favorite game was “strangle.” As I remember the rules, he would pretend to strangle me, and I, so happy to get my older brother’s attention, waited till… More
Shelomo Ibn Gabirol: The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain
Poems from The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492, (Princeton University Press).Translated from the Arabic by Peter ColePeter Cole is the recipient of… More
Drowning in Apathy
Polar bears are the largest land carnivores, reaching mythic proportions: 12 feet high, 2,000 pounds. They have 42 ivory teeth, and their paws are 12 inches wide, with curved,… More
The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain
SHMU’EL HANAGID(993-1056)The GazelleI’d given everything I own for that gazelle who, rising at night to his harp and flute, saw a cup in my hand and said:“Drink your grape… More
Avraham Ibn Ezra (c. 1093 – c. 1167)
With the departure of Yehuda HaLevi for the Land of Israel and, several years later, the first wave of invasions by the North African Almohads, the Golden Age of… More
Todros Abulafia (1247 – after 1300)
A distant relative of Meir HaLevi Abulafia, but no relation to Avraham, Todros Ben Yehuda Abulafia was born in Toledo in 1247 and spent most of his life in… More
Yehuda Halevi: The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain
Poems from The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492, (Princeton University Press).Translated from the Arabic by Peter ColePeter Cole is the recipient of… More