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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Getty; The Atlantic All the Pretty Republicans
If Cormac McCarthy interpreted the humiliations of Kevin McCarthy
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Mood Swings
If you don’t like me now, just give it an hour.
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Daniele Castellano T. S. Eliot Saw All This Coming
One hundred years after the publication of The Waste Land, its vision has never been more terrifying.
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Elliot Erwitt / Magnum Ode to the French Baguette
Intangible in cultural heritage, tangible in my mouth
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Mohamed Farag / Getty; The Atlantic Ode to Not Watching the World Cup
This is an event of such astoundingly obvious wrongness that doing the right thing is easy.
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Pull-Ups
It’s you versus you.
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Photo-illustration by Gabriela Pesqueira. Source: Michel Ginfray / … ABBA’s Triumphant Return
Take a chance on them.
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Crying Babies
WaaaAAAaaaaaAaaHhh!
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Olivia Arthur / Magnum Ode to King Charles III
A poem for the new monarch
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Tim Lahan An Ode to Being Read To
Bedtime stories aren’t just for children.
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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
