As It Ought To Be

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: JESSICA COMOLA

Posted on May 25, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

VALENTINE
By Jessica Comola

Let X stand for God. The one I love, let his name be God. And may we walk a wire taut with black birds. Let the wire snap quick as a switchblade across the back of a field. Where he is angry, where he pulls out a child’s shoulder blade like a bit of grey chicken, let there be a brick on his tongue. Let him smear an X across his chest in mud lie breathless in a field. The one I love, let him be a hare stained pink in the fur. Let him hold still in the long-grass like a railroad crossing. Where there is a brick’s weight, let it be the scream of a red siren. If you will be my Valentine, I will stand naked in the highway and burn pink. A switchblade snaps like a child’s hairclip. Somewhere a hare screams with a human voice. The railroad crawls on all fours. My Valentine holds his cross crossways and the long-grass makes a mud of it. If mud were a tongue we would speak it where the street makes a God at the stoplight. A siren sings through these wires. If the railroad is an integer, let it be a single switchblade. For what he did to a child, let him scream like a stoplight. If I crawl on all fours, let me go crossways. Let X equal Y. The one I love, let his name be God.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Jessica Comola currently lives in Oxford, MS where she is an MFA candidate at the University of Mississippi. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly, Redivider, Thrush, Everyday Genius, and Anti-, among others.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem is dense like a forest. Alive and full of things you can neither pass through effortlessly nor understand at first glance. Don’t be afraid to spend some time within it. Let the story underneath the story grow roots and take hold. Find your steady ground in its alliteration, then stay a while. You may never leave.

On a personal note, because this series often touches on the personal, as I was preparing today’s post I received word that my MFA Thesis has been approved! I write to you, from this point forward, as Sivan Butler-Rotholz, J.D., M.F.A.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: CARL PHILLIPS

Posted on May 18, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

CHROMATIC BLACK
By Carl Phillips

Of the many things that he used to say to me, there are two
I’m certain of: You taste like a last less-than-long summer afternoon
by the shore just before September; and

You’re the kind of betrayal, understand, I’ve been waiting for,
all my life. When did remembering stop meaning
to be lit from within—bodily—
and the mind, briefly flickering
again out—wasn’t that forgetting? Somewhere
abandon’s still just a word to be turned away from, as from a man
on fire. Remorse, I think,
is not regret. How new, as in full of chance, the nights here
still can seem to be,
if you keep your eyes closed. Here’s a lullaby:
“No more bondage, no triumph either, no more the bluing waves
of shame…”

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Ploughshares and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Carl Phillips is the author of twelve books of poems, most recently Silverchest. He teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.

Editor’s Note: Carl Phillips is a master of the-line-that-blows-you-away. “You’re the kind of betrayal, understand, I’ve been waiting for, / all my life.” “Somewhere / abandon’s still just a word to be turned away from, as from a man / on fire” “Remorse, I think, / is not regret.” This poet speaks the truth, rewriting the world in a way we all wish we could. I, for one, am humbled.

Want to read more by and about Carl Phillips?
Poets.org
The Poetry Foundation
Q & A on Smartish Pace

NICOLE LOMANGINO

Posted on May 17, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

NICOLE LOMANGINO @STANFORD UNIVERSITY ART SPACE

by Anthony Torres

Now at Stanford University Art Space is the work of Nicole Lomangino, an artist whose personal translations and representations of geishas articulate a longstanding interest in Japanese art and myths.

The work seems deeply inspired by traditionalUkiyo-epaintings and woodblock prints of the Edo Period in Japan (late 1600’s-1800’s), which depict history, landscapes, theater, and pleasure quarters. The word ukiyo or “floating world” refers to impermanence and fleeting beauty. The original subject(s) of ukiyo-e were activities and scenes from city life and the realms of entertainment — kabuki, courtesans, geisha — divorced from the world of the mundane. The prints were disseminated and affordable because they were mass-produced.

In translating her subjects — geishas — Lomangino has developed a strategy of blending figures painted with watercolor and gouache with a collage technique that utilizes handmade Yuzen papers to visually construct her subjects’ bodies, hair adornments, and kimonos, in a complex architectonic dance of textural patterns, form, and color.

In so doing, she creates works that depict solitary figures formed by reassembling and juxtaposing the painted images with the cut paper, so that the faces hover in a orchestrated sea of ebbs and flows that are seamlessly fused in a unitary whole.

In Tanabata, for example, a solitary figure floats against a cloudlike powder blue-grey background. The figure’s face, left forearm, and hands emerge from a billowy mass of pictorially simulated fabric. In her left hand, she holds an upraised streamer that appears to be blowing in the wind across the top portion of the image, above her head.

The patterns in the cut paper vary and include birds, which add to the allusion to in-flight travel or movement. This is reinforced by a cut streamer tied to the figure’s wrist, which similarly mimics the curvilinear flowing “fabric” overhead.

Here, the rendering of the geisha is anchored by the pale white face/head of the subject. The face is crowned by her black hair, which is adorned with a curvilinear hair ornament above her forehead. Below her chin and at the shoulders is the bulbous kimono-like garment formed from Yuzen paper that has been cut and pasted so that the edges demarcate and enclose the sections that constitute the folds of the “fabric” portions of the garment.

The intersecting lines that delineate these sections serve as devices for the dynamism created by the careful arrangement of the compositional structure and juxtaposition of patterns in the paper, creating tension, movement, and depth within the picture plane.

As in much of the work, the figure occupies an autonomous space that is at once nebulous and self-contained, formed from a formal strategy and mode of expression that characterizes many of her works — the conjuring of traditions and images from the past to enunciate aesthetic concerns in the present.

Looking at these images, one finds it necessary to reflect on Lomangino’s intercultural identification with her subject and the historical sources condensed in the works, and to wonder how the aesthetic strategies she utilizes comment on a history of globalization and relate to her personal experience(s).

In complex way, her choice to rearticulate images associated with the Japanese Edo period speaks to histories of European colonization that disseminated aesthetic ideas through cultural dominance, and in so doing created contact sites of intercultural exposure, exchange, influence, and transformation; and also how those contact histories are mutually generative of a range of aesthetic translations.

Perhaps more importantly, the work alludes to a personal aesthetic as being socially imbricated in the world, and is thus emblematic of the social character of art. By extension, it addresses the way people are formed through processes of acquiring, forming, and asserting subjectivities, and conversely, how personal identity is impacted by trans-cultural global realities.

This seems particularly relevant here, because these images speak to the idea that individuals and art works are relationally situated and constituted through cultures, people, and objects external to their being.

–Anthony Torres

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: TONY HOAGLAND

Posted on May 11, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

THE COMPLEX SENTENCE
By Tony Hoagland

The kind Italian driver of the bus to Rome
invited her to his house—she was obviously
hungry—and gave her sandwiches
and raped her.

All those years ago—she smiles
while telling it—contemptuous,
somehow
of her younger self,

who drags behind her like a can.
Grammar is great
but who will write the sentence that includes
the story of the damage to her soul

and how she thought her bad Italian
was at fault, and
how it took a month for her to say
the word for what had happened
in her head?

But that’s why
we invented the complex sentence,
so we could stand at a distance,

making slight adjustments
of the harness,
while following the twisty, ever-turning plot:

the loneliness of what we did;
the loneliness
of what was done to us.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Ploughshares and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Tony Hoagland has published five books of poetry and prose about poetry with Graywolf Press.

Editor’s Note: Isn’t language amazing? How it unfolds, at once telling a story and creating the safe/dangerous/charged space that story can exist within? Tony Hoaglan is a true master of the sentence. He understands its complexities, knows how to manipulate the malleable material with his pen. How complex the sentence needs to be that can carry the weight of today’s message, how artful the poet who brings the sentence and the story to life.

Want to read more by and about Tony Hoagland?
Friday Poetry Series on As It Ought To Be
Poets.org
The Poetry Foundation

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: SPRING!

Posted on May 4, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

New York’s Jefferson Market Garden in full spring bloom; the editor enjoying the same.
Flower photos by Sivan Butler-Rotholz. Editor photo by Frank Ortega.

Poems & Excerpts For Spring:

For winter’s rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

– Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)
Atalanta in Calydon (1865)

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough.

– A.E. Housman (1859–1936)
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

The month of May was come,
when every lusty heart beginneth
to blossom, and to bring forth fruit;
for like as herbs and trees bring
forth fruit and flourish in May,
in likewise every lusty heart
that is in any manner a lover,
springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds.
For it giveth unto all lovers courage,
that lusty month of May.

– Sir Thomas Malory (d. 1471)
Le Morte d’Arthur (1485)

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King.

– Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
No. 1333 (c.1875)

(Today’s poems are in the public domain, belong to the masses, and appear here today accordingly.)

Editor’s Note: Why? “For winter’s rains and ruins are over,” and the trees are “hung with bloom[s] along the bough.” Because “that lusty month of May” is here, and there is “[a] little Madness in the Spring.” Because everywhere I turn there are bright colors, sweet sights and smells of spring blossoms, and new life overtaking what was once the winter earth. Because it is spring! Nature is putting on her party dress and blessing us with glorious, beautiful spring. And what better way to welcome this lovely season than with poetry?

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: ARLENE KIM

Posted on April 27, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

By Arlene Kim:

(Today’s poems originally appeared in Diode and appear here today with permission from the poet.)

Arlene Kim grew up on the east coast of the U.S. before drifting westward. Her first collection of poems What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes? (Milkweed Editions) won the 2012 American Book Award. She lives in Seattle where she reads for the poetry journal DMQ Review and writes poems, prose, and bits between.

Editor’s Note: The biography of Prince Sado is fascinating, but there is no entry into this (or any) history quite like that of a poet. Arlene Kim has latched onto this fascinating tale, and in her telling she not only invites us into a history, but also makes that history entirely new, entirely her own. Who was Prince Sado—in both his life and death—and how does he live anew in the imagination of the poet?

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: CATHERINE PIERCE

Posted on April 20, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

Photo by Megan Bean

BECAUSE I’LL NEVER SWIM IN EVERY OCEAN
By Catherine Pierce

Want is ten thousand blue feathers falling
all around me, and me unable to stomach
that I might catch five but never ten thousand.
So I drop my hands to my sides and wait
to be buried. I open a book and the words
spring and taunt. Flashes—motel, lapidary,
piranha—of every story, every poem I’ll never
know well enough to conjure in sleep.
What’s the point of words if I can’t
own them all? I toss book after book
into my imaginary trashcan fire.
Or I think I’ll learn piano. At the first lesson,
we’re clapping whole and half notes
and this is childish, I’m better than this.
I’d like to leave playing Ravel. I’d like
to give a concerto on Saturday. So I quit.
I have standards. Then on Saturday,
I have a beer, watch a telethon. Or
we watch a documentary on Antarctica.
The interviewees are from Belarus, Lima, Berlin.
Everyone speaks English. Everyone names
a philosopher, an ethos. One man carries a raft
on his back at all times. I went to Nebraska once
and swore it was a great adventure. It was.
I think of how I’ll never go to Antarctica,
mainly because I don’t much want to. But
I should want to. I should be the girl
with a raft on her back. When I think
of all the mountains and monuments
and skyscapes I haven’t seen, all the trains
I should take, all the camels and mopeds
and ferries I should ride, all the scorching
hikes I should nearly die on, I press
my body down, down into the vast green
couch. If I step out the door, the infinity
of what I’ve missed will zorro me across
the face with a big L for Lazy. Sometimes
I watch finches at the feeder, their wings small
suns, and have to grab the sill to steady myself.
Metaphorically, of course. I’m no loon.
Look—even my awestruck is half-assed.
But I’m so tired of the small steps—
the pentatonic scale, the frequent flyer
hoarding, the one exquisite sentence
in a forest of exquisite sentences.
There is a globe welling up inside of me.
Mountain ranges ridging my skin,
oceans filling my mouth. If I stay still
long enough, I could become my own world.

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Diode and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Catherine Pierce is the author of The Girls of Peculiar (Saturnalia 2012) and Famous Last Words (Saturnalia 2008). Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, Slate, Boston Review, Ploughshares, FIELD, and elsewhere. She lives in Starkville, Mississippi, where she co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem speaks to the troubled inner workings of the Writer. Writer with a capital W because the poet speaks for writers at large. For the crippling fear that lies at the heart of my new mantra: Everything you want is on the other side of fear.

Catherine Pierce gets it. And she says it better than most, despite her willingness to “toss book after book into [her] imaginary trashcan fire” for the frustration of “every poem [she’ll] never know well enough to conjure.” The road to creation is paved with becoming “so tired of the small steps” because “There is a globe welling up inside of [you,]… oceans filling [your] mouth.” Yes, and yes, and amen.

Today’s poem is dedicated to Jenny Stella. Because. And then because, again. As for me, I have shared the poet’s struggle in my own art, in comic form, though admittedly with far less eloquence.

I should also note that I have had the pleasure of sharing Catherine Pierce’s work on this series before, and am continually drawn to the poet’s unparallelled way with words.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: MATT HART

Posted on April 13, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

DAILY CHORES
By Matt Hart

The important things
don’t just happen by accident
They don’t get said
if no one’s willing
to go out on a limb
and maybe fall into the waiting
arms of the meadow, the meadow so dark
we can’t see it, or so light-bright
I can’t see you drumming
right next to me yesterday—
perfectly clattery cacophony—
the latter a word that makes a shape
in one’s mouth      Say it,
Cacophony      Your body changes
Your mind moves over the water
And that’s really all there is
You are bigger than lightning
And the waves don’t dry up
for fear of crashing against me
If this all seems a little abstract
it’s because I’m becoming less
fond of the concrete particulars,
the polyp in my throat
won’t burst or go away
like a dandelion    I think
I should do more screaming
about the contented little houses
of this neighborhood
and the tensions well-hidden
inside them, a million secret swells
of violence and affection,
the motion of the jungle
right here in Cincinnati
And last night’s dishes
still stacked in the sink,
the laundry too dumb
to be surprising

(Today’s poem originally appeared in Diode and appears here today with permission from the poet.)

Matt Hart is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless (Typecast Publishing, 2012) and Debacle Debacle (H_NGM_N Books, 2013). His awards include a Pushcart Prize, a 2013 individual artist grant from The Shifting Foundation, and fellowships from both the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. A co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, he lives in Cincinnati where he teaches at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and plays in the band TRAVEL.

Editor’s Note: Dean Young of The American Reader says of Matt Hart that he is “a poet of enormous vroom. Vast with Whitman’s cosmic warmth but reckless with his own outbursts of punk intensity.” This is a poetry alive with an energy and life force all its own. Today’s poem reads like the free association of an ADHD-riddled mind espousing the soft touch of the lyric. The subject under consideration constantly shifts, illuminated by flashes of electricity (“You are bigger than lightning”), moments of classic poetic beauty (“and maybe fall into the waiting / arms of the meadow”), and thoughtful insight into both the mind that houses this world and the world that houses this mind (“I think / I should do more screaming / about the contented little houses / of this neighborhood / and the tensions well-hidden / inside them, a million secret swells / of violence and affection”). This is a poem that warrants reading and re-reading; new discoveries unfold, both stunning and surprising, with each pass.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: PRAYERS LIKE SHOES

Posted on March 30, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

FROM PRAYERS LIKE SHOES
By Ruth Forman

STAND

why so afraid to stand up?
someone will tell you
sit down?

but here is the truth
someone will always tell you
sit down

the ones we remember
kept standing

PRAYERS LIKE SHOES

I wear prayers like shoes

pull em on quiet each morning
take me through the uncertain day

don’t know
what might knock me off course

sit up in bed
pull on the right
then the left
before shower before teeth

my mama’s gift
to walk me through this life

she wore strong ones
the kind steady your ankles
i know
cause when her man left/ her children
gone/ her eldest son without goodbye
they the only ones keep her
standing

i saw her
still standing

mama passed on
some things to me
ma smile sense a discipline
ma
subtle behind

but best she passed on
girl you go to God
and get you some good shoes
cause this life ain’t steady ground

now i don’t wear hers
you take em with you you know
but i suspect they made by the same company
pull em on each morning
first the right then the left

best piece a dress
i got

THESE HIPS

these hips ripe plums
don’t believe
come
taste

these midnight moons
made a sugar’s juice
know how to curve a line
make a knife shiver
in anticipation

these hips ripe plums
don’t believe
run yr hand long this

n tell me

God did not know what She was doing
when She
gentled her hand
in a half moon
two times
smoothed
the most perfect
fruit
on earth

THE AIR ABOVE OUR TONGUES

We do not speak. afraid
of what might happen to us

the air above our tongues
prays for us to speak. afraid
of what might happen
if we don’t

Prayers Like Shoes: Whit Press, in partnership with Hedgebrook, presents this magnificent collection of poetry from highly acclaimed writer and poet Ruth Forman. “Ruth Forman’s Prayers Like Shoes is a book you will carry with you for life, give to people you love, and turn to in times of joy and sadness. Her words are as natural as grass and air, and the stories they tell will travel from the page to your heart.” — Gloria Steinem

Ruth Forman is the author of three award-winning books: poetry collections We Are the Young Magicians (Beacon, 1993) and Renaissance, (Beacon, 1997) and children’s book, Young Cornrows Callin Out the Moon (Children’s Book Press, 2007). She is the recipient of the Barnard New Women Poets Prize, The Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, The Durfee Artist Fellowship, the National Council of Teachers of English Notable Book Award, and recognition by The American Library Association. She provides writing workshops at schools and universities across the country and abroad, and has presented in forums such as the United Nations, the PBS series The United States of Poetry and National Public Radio. Ruth is a former teacher of creative writing with the University of Southern California and June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley and an eleven-year faculty member with the VONA-Voices writing program. Also an MFA graduate of the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television, she frequently collaborates on film, music, dance, theatre, art and media projects. Her latest collection is Prayers Like Shoes (2009) on Whit Press. When not writing and teaching, she practices a passion for martial arts: classical Yang family style tai chi chuan, tai chi sword, bo staff and karate. Ms. Forman currently lives in Washington, DC.

Editor’s Note: Today’s feature is more than a book of poetry, it is a gift. When my father passed away I found myself more determined to go on, to function, than to break down and mourn his loss. It was a book of poems that enabled me to weep, to grieve. It is a rare book that allows you to access the real human being who dwells within you, beneath the surface of what you imagine to be your ‘real life.’ This is such a book.

On the strong recommendation of a friend I bought Prayers Like Shoes. Because time is a luxury in my life, I began reading it while waiting for the bus. By the time the bus arrived—by the time I reached the bottom of the first page—I was in tears.

I read from cover to cover, on bus and train, first on my way into the world, then on my way home again. At times I felt the Woman inside me awaken, celebrate. At times I felt inspired to speak up in the name of peace. I wondered at love, at the nature of man. Throughout—within the delicate, vibrant, intricate fabric of Forman’s weaving—my heart was so close to the surface that the tears fell when they would.

I wondered what the people on the bus thought of me with my book of poems and my well of tears, but, mostly I was inspired. I was reminded of what I love in poetry. Experience. Connectivity. Reading someone else’s words and feeling that I am not alone, that I am part of a community, of a human world. That life is beautiful and painful and hard and that it is poetry—honest, vocal, unapologetic, lived, felt, lyric poetry—that makes the living more bearable, that gives us permission to experience emotion while offering us an outlet for the same.

I chose the quote above by Gloria Steinem because, first of all, what poet is touted by Gloria Steinem?!, but also because it speaks the truth about this book. I want to give a copy to my mother, to my Sisters, to the people I love and admire who engage with poetry as I do. I will turn to this book when I want to feel, and also when I want to remember why I write poetry. I cannot imagine a greater gift than that.

Want to see more by Ruth Forman?
Ruth Forman’s Official Website
Buy Ruth Forman’s books

The Pope is Coming! The Pope is Coming!

Posted on March 29, 2013 by asitoughttobemagazine

White smoke emerges from the chimney on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Wednesday, March 13, 2013. indicating that the new pope has been elected. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia) — White smoke emerges from the chimney on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Wednesday, March 13, 2013, indicating that the new pope has been elected. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

The Pope is Coming! The Pope is Coming!
By Mark S. Unger

This is CNN, and I’m a talking head on what used to be the nation’s top 24-hour news channel. As you know from watching TV news, reading the paper, listening to radio, Twitter, TMZ, or just about any other media outlet, the Pope announced several weeks ago that he would be resigning. The papal duties proved too much for someone whose job it was to pray all the time. Now he’ll be able to do all those things he couldn’t do as Pope, like pray all the time.

The Vatican told us he was resigning to spend more time with God, and we believed them. After all, it’s not our job to look deeper. Oh wait, it is. Instead, the Italian media uncovered the real reason behind the pontiff’s sudden departure—a brewing scandal involving gay priests, and more cover-up of the ongoing child sexual predator priests. Unlike us, the Pope foresaw the coming avalanche of investigations, arrests, public humiliation, and scrutiny that was about to be heaped upon the highest office of the Catholic Church.

Call it “Papacy Death Storm 2013.” A great headline, but, like most weather-related superstorms, it turned out to be nothing. Nothing for us to cover, that is. Why should we sully the biggest story to hit the Church in nearly six centuries with a bunch of that nasty investigative journalism? Instead, how about a countdown to the new Pope? That sounds like so much more fun. So what if that makes us just as culpable for ignoring the abuse and scandal as the Church itself? The Church may have a reason for trying to cover up the whole ugly mess, but so do we. I think. So let’s not get all caught up in whether or not it’s CNN’s job to report, investigate, dig for information, and expose issues. Let’s run Headlines instead.

Headlines are how this news organization gets respect. “Conclave to choose a new Pope expected to begin in five days,” then four, three , two, one, and finally, “The conclave has begun!” Wow. Heckuva job, Brownie (substitute name of whichever on-scene talking head has been in front of the Vatican for the last five days). Way to go, Scoop!

Not that there weren’t some important facts unearthed during those five days. The Pope will not be wearing his red Prada slippers anymore, but he will be staying in the Vatican. And this just in: Pope Benedict XVI mugs are selling out in the gift shops to make room for the new Pope memorabilia. Nothing like reporting on Kennedy’s assassination by noting Jackie’s outfit, or Paul Revere’s famous ride to warn Americans that the British drink tea. CNN Alert! The ratings are coming! The ratings are coming!

But I digress. Back to more Headlines. “Cardinals take oath of secrecy!” Isn’t that what got them into this mess in the first place?

“Happening now: Doors to Sistine Chapel about to close,” followed shortly by, “Cardinals locked away in Sistine Chapel.” If only we could do this with Congress.

Then there was this, “Breaking News: Black smoke appears at Vatican—Means no new Pope chosen today.” Now that’s how you turn no news into breaking news. But there was more. “No Pope chosen on Day 1 of conclave.” Genius, pure genius.

No headline, however, captured the essence of TV news like the following sequence: “The world waits for new Pope—115 cardinals take oath of secrecy,” followed immediately by “From pro soccer to priesthood—former player gives up the game for seminary.” And no one knows more about giving up the game than CNN.

Ultimately, the smoke changed color, meaning a new Pope had been chosen. We were all over it (the color change). We had no clue who would be chosen. A man of the people, we were told, known more for eschewing the trappings of his predecessors, and for his work with the poor. And a little bit about that thing in Argentina for not standing up for some women who were about to be killed by the Pinochet regime. Yada, yada, yada. Blah, blah, blah. We did our job.

OK, what’s next? Really? OK. Quick! Everyone! To Tel Aviv! The President is coming! The President is coming!

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NICOLE LOMANGINO @STANFORD UNIVERSITY ART SPACE

by Anthony Torres

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The Pope is Coming! The Pope is Coming! By Mark S. Unger

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The Pope is Coming! The Pope is Coming!
By Mark S. Unger