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“... experience without it becoming a form of competitive self-abasement. (In his poem ‘Cakewalk’, Jericho Brown writes: ‘My man swears his HIV better than mine, that his has in it a little gold, something he can spend if he ever gets old.’)In ‘the flower who bloomed thru the fence in grandmama’s yard’, Smith reaches further into the complicated ...”

“... across the diagonal of the room, is topped with the remnants of a crown of leaves, now crisp and brown, and terminates with a root-bole, round and heavy, like the knob of a club. The paintings resemble sheets from a herbarium where specimens – palm leaves, but other plants as well – have been mounted by a deranged botanist who has attacked them with ...”

“... for one whose kingdom was not of this world. In Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, Wendy Brown notes that walls symbolise the will to closure. As inherited tracts of masonry, they recall bygone enmities, but also mark the limits of civility. Yet the revealed will to close down politics, being itself political, is self-defeating. Antigone in ...”

“... they lie in ruins, you can’t be sure whether you are looking at Afghanistan in 2002 AD, or Jericho in 2002 BC – except that Jericho was not defended by heavy machine-guns. Three things emerge from talking to the forts’ defenders from the former Northern Alliance, especially the Panjshiris. Two are ...”

“... citadel.In her shuttered eyes,I glimpse the climbing walls,No trumpet of mine will bring down her Jericho. Her mobile pings and her thumbs tap out retorts.She smiles into her phone,But facing me the portcullis slams shut.My storming love bounces back,From her stony stare.There’s no need to trouble ourselves over whether the pencil sketches and the poetry ...”

“... and reached the Colorado River, far to its east. T.S. Eliot’s Mississippi was a ‘strong brown god’: the Colorado River is more like a ruddy writhing serpent. Or was, since the snake has now been chopped into segments by dams, notably by Glen Canyon Dam above the Grand Canyon, and Hoover Dam south of Vegas, each with a gigantic reservoir backed up ...”

“... in 1965, was named in his honour (the US later matched this with spaceships called Charlie Brown and Snoopy). There was also, predictably, a more mundane range of Astérix spin-offs, from mustard to washing powder, that flooded the French market in the 1960s and 1970s. The story goes that Goscinny’s partner, Albert Uderzo, once saw three ...”

“... the machinations of his enemies. Brivati’s previous books include The End of Decline: Blair and Brown in Power, as well as biographies of the Labour Party eminences Lord Goodman and Hugh Gaitskell. He met Naqvi’s family just after his arrest in London. The pivot of the book is Abraaj’s planned sale of Karachi Electric to a Chinese company, which Brivati ...”

“... by all the males of my family), were clogged with Christian tourists, carrying dreadful little brown crosses in their hands with a look of rapt vacancy, wandering everywhere, oblivious to the 20th-century conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. As the Holy Land’s nerve centre, and the likeliest source of future unrest, Jerusalem has never been ...”