State of the Nation

Amazing Race

How post-racial was Obama’s victory?

Essays

Closing Guantánamo

The problem of preventive detention
David Cole
With Web-only responses by Robert Chesney, Joanne Mariner, and Eric Posner.

A Tribe Apart

Afghan elites face a corrosive past
Barnett R. Rubin

Common Cause

Real help for Iranian democrats
Abbas Milani

God

Philosophers weigh in
Alex Byrne

Always at the After Party

Where Liberals and Libertarians Part Company—web feature
Josh Cohen

New Fiction Forum

Up High in the Air

Laura van den Berg

Worldmaker

Remembering Thomas Disch
John Crowley

Poison Flow

Edward St. Aubyn takes on the English upper class
Neel Mukherjee

On Film

The Mind’s Eye

Charlie Kaufman’s
Synecdoche, New York
Alan A. Stone

On Poetry

Water Damage

Two new collections challenge lyric’s decorum
Amelia Klein

Revelation

The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest
Brian Teare

Microreviews

Charles Simic
Chelsey Minnis
Amy Newman
Craig Morgan Teicher

Poems

As One Bereft of Reason

Ken White

Topics for Amplification

Brett Fletcher Lauer

Objects

Martha Ronk

Fragment 941: Aphrodite of Kypros

Sophocles trans. by Reginald Gibbons

Dies Irae

L.S. Asekoff

Miss Peach: The Novel

Catie Rosemurgy

I Would Remain By Night With You

Joanna Klink

Sunday balustrade

Ron Winkler trans. by J.D. Schneider

Win

Money Shot

Rae Armantrout

Icicles Tine Barnward from the Barn’s Shallow Eave

Rob Schlegel

Poet’s Sampler: Brandon Shimoda

Introduced by Karen Volkman