Complacent America

Introducing American Samizdat

“To warn against, prepare for, and persevere until.”

Art, culture, information, and ideas for a free, tolerant, and democratic people.

*Samizdat, a Russian term dating from about 1966, means “self-published” and refers to the underground publication and circulation of banned, unauthorized, and dissident articles or books, often by hand and passed from reader to reader. Samizdat publication occurred across the Soviet Bloc. Its manual reproduction was necessitated by government control over the registration and permissions to access both typewriters and printing devices. Samizdat smuggled out of the country to lands supporting a free press became known as tamizdat.

USA YEAR ZERO

Last week I began teaching a four-week introduction to poetry class, four weeks of four-day-a-week multi-hour instruction intended to cram a full semester of learning into a summer month. I’ve taught the class in one form or another for years. I look to provide students with as sweeping a vision of the breadth of po…