On fine muslin, sartorial word origins, and the sensual tension of revealing while concealing.
The Christian Fig
The abundance of names for the humble prickly pear offers a lesson on the fruits of intercultural contact and the lasting influence shipwreck, captivity, and feelings of colonial superiority.
A Dog's Tail is Never Straight
The lazy and incorrigible are never cured of their bad habits.
To journey
On travel and veils of ignorance
God, ants, and circuitous destruction
On the meandering and mysterious expressions of divine will
The slave of a sheikh
Sheikhs, patronage, slaves, and dogs
Deadly fruits, pt. 1
Fruits that kill
A book only a pedant could love
Classical Arabic, dusty grammars, and the pedant’s conversational non-starter
The nobility of sugar
A snatch of poetry fit for the summer solstice
Knockin’ on heaven’s door
Fortune and the bold
Potsherds and preparation
Calligraphy and the transfiguration of banal sentiment into high art
Abu Nuwas, wine, and woe: a new translation
On Arabic under the Abbasids, with a new translation of a classic poem
Praising and killing
The acute danger of too-pointed praise
ṭāwūs
On peacocks and verdant lands in which every kind of plant flowers
The moon and the stars
Perspective and celestial immanence
Vagabond poetry
Self-aggrandizing poetry and the libertarian aesthetic
Con Air, and why we write
On the difference between what and why
Writing on the wall
Writing and the pictorial arts
bāšara
Skin to skin