James Parker
Turned On, his 1998 biography of the punk-rock performer Henry Rollins, has been described as “breathlessly brilliant” (New Musical Express) and “a modern-day Pilgrim’s Progress” (Feed.com). He was previously a staff writer for the Boston Phoenix, where he won New England Newspapers and Press Association awards for his reporting on history and religious issues, and an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for music criticism. In 2012, he was nominated for a National Magazine Award for his columns at The Atlantic. In 2017–18 he was the Institute of Liberal Arts journalism fellow at Boston College. Since 2011, Parker has been running the Black Seed Writers Group—a weekly writing workshop for homeless, transitional, and recently housed writers–and editing The Pilgrim, a literary magazine from the homeless community of downtown Boston.
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Illustration by Paul Spella. Source: Bettmann / Getty; … The Unlovable, Irresistible John Donne
The Elizabethan poet and divine was a mystic in bed and a mystic in the pulpit.
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Being in a Band
I can’t believe how good we sound.
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C-Span / The Atlantic An Ode to Trump’s Outtakes
His post-insurrection-speech rehearsals are even more revealing—and disturbing—than the final version.
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Tim Lahan An Ode to My Thesaurus
Truly an essential, indispensable, necessitous volume
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Chewing Gum
Have a stick.
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Illustration by Gabriela Pesqueira. Source: Omar Vega / … A Late-Night Show for Red America
Greg Gutfeld has owned the libs all the way to the top of the ratings.
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Hotel Rooms
The smells, the sounds, the bodywash
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Oliver Munday The Story of Jack and Neal
The friendship that made On the Road—and the Beat Generation—possible
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Giving People Money
You won’t regret it.
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Oliver Munday; The Atlantic The Unforgettable Mark Lanegan
An appreciation of the greatest voice to come out of the grunge era
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Being Late
Either you’re early or you’re late. I choose tardiness.
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Pete Cronin / Redferns / Getty Five Lessons in Creativity From Metallica
The artistic process, as revealed by demos, alternative takes, and abandoned cuts of a heavy-metal classic
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Illustration by Paul Spella. Sources: Chris Hellier / … Rewriting the Book of Genesis
Cast into political exile, and into darkness by his failing eyesight, John Milton was determined to accomplish “things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.”
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Tim Lahan An Ode to America
You’re better than this, sweet land of liberty.
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Linda McCartney / Apple Corps Ltd. / Disney+ Like Watching Six Different Marriages Fall Apart
What Peter Jackson’s Get Back reveals about the Beatles breakup
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Barbecue Potato Chips
Void of nutritional value, divorced from the intense culinary process that is actual barbecuing, irresistible
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Illustration by Gabriela Pesqueira. Source: Universal History Archive … Why Did Dostoyevsky Write Crime and Punishment?
He had no choice.
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Being Yelled At
Everyone, now and then, needs a good and thorough denouncing.
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The Atlantic Ozymandias 2
A poem for Monday
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Squirrels
What animal lives closer to us than you do?
