The only poem here that isn’t out­right gawd-awful is Tomaž Šalamun’s, largely because it begins, “Yep. There was a wall.” The others trip over one another en route to piety.

Many people con­tinue to eat meat even after they real­ize that by doing so they are guilty of crimes so severe in their cru­elty & horror that anyone who can wit­ness them with­out feel­ing the remorse of con­science must be a sociopath. If you eat factory-​farmed ani­mals, you are guilty of tor­ture—of inflict­ing unspeak­able agony & suf­fer­ing on con­scious beings. But ratio­nal­iza­tion is easy if you don’t have to see or hear your vic­tims. Self-​interest ain’t so blithely evaded, so I’m very glad to see this arti­cle in The New York Times. The cost of a burger is higher than you think.

An op-​ed about steering-​wheel Breath­a­lyz­ers sand­wiched between two columns that open with Ted Kennedy men­tions? And you thought this was a lib­eral newspaper…

I like the Bryan twins as much as the next guy—I even knew one of them a little back in the day—but you really have to wonder whether we need two in-​depth pro­files of them in the same week:

From The New Yorker:

From the Times Magazine: