Antioch College Statement in Response to Antioch Review Essay, “The Sacred Androgen: The Transgender Debate” By Daniel Harris

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It has come to our attention that an article published in the Winter 2016 issue of The Antioch Review is stirring debate in our campus and alumni communities and within the broader transgender community. Daniel Harris’ views are his own, and based on the response of some readers, are deeply offensive to many transgender individuals and supporters. Antioch College does not condone or always agree with the ideas and viewpoints expressed in the Review. We do, however, have confidence in the Review’s editor and editorial process, and support a key Antiochian value—the free expression of ideas and opinions, even when they run counter to our own. As a college, we encourage our students, faculty, and the broader community to engage in critical thought and dialogue around important issues, including this one. We believe commitments to the ideals of free expression and support for LGBTQ human and civil rights are not incompatible.

 

© 2016 The Antioch Review

POEM WEDNESDAY – “My First Escape” by Garret Keizer

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This poem is from the Winter 2016 of The Antioch Review.

“MY FIRST ESCAPE”
by Garret Keizer

In my hands, I had a copy of the “Iliad”
in the Russian hexameter of Gnyeditch;
in my pocket, a passport made out in the name
of Trotsky, which I wrote in it at random,
without even imagining that it would become
my name for the rest of my life.

Thus he makes his first escape—
from Siberia into his fixed identity.
Homer, too, might be a pseudonym,
might not have been one man.
Collective authorship—the Marxist
in him must have smiled at the thought.

He believes in history
more than in himself,
is not dismayed by randomness.
A losing streak is merely that,
a streak on the windowpane
of his railway carriage speeding west.

Years later a case of flu contracted
duck hunting on the River Dubna
will keep him from Lenin’s funeral
and from the struggle for succession,

as the quarrel over Brisêis,
will keep Achilles in his tent the day
when Hector nearly torched the ships.

Nearly. Homer does not bother
to tell us of the wooden horse, the arrow
in the hero’s heel. He assumes we know
where all of this is going.

***
Garret Keizer1Garret Keizer is a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine, a Guggenheim Fellow, and the author of eight books of prose, the most recent of which are Getting Schooled, Privacy, and The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want. His poetry has appeared in a number of publications, including Agni, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Hudson Review, Image, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Raritan, and The Best American Poetry. 

http://www.garretkeizer.com

 

 

 

© 2016 The Antioch Review

POEM WEDNESDAY – The Way Back by George Witte

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George Witte’s poem, “The Way Back” is in the Winter 2016 issue of The Antioch Review.

 

THE WAY BACK
by George Witte

Not pebbles   bread   abandoned children’s shoes
scat trail of fearful ingenuity
but contour lines   familiar sloping hills
crushed mailbox where we know to turn   don’t tell
light falling as it fell across the lake
in postcard photographs   our neighbor seemed
grandfatherly   side door so dark and low
outsiders wouldn’t dare investigate
we scavenged garbage   basements   backyard sheds
for private implements   with crows convened
on autumn roads to pluck remains and scream
no telling where we ended up or who
pursued   the glazed and crenellated house
the oven’s rancid breath   don’t tell how close
we came or what we did to live again
air parting air   we glide enshadowed paths
malingering among regretful things
damp pebbles bright as eyes   crusts soft and warm
our shoes transparent   delicate   they fit
as if we never ran away   unlaced
deranged   splayed open with their tongues pulled out

***

 

George Witte photo(1)George Witte is the author of three collections of poems, Does She Have a Name? (NYQ Books, 2014), Deniability (2009), and The Apparitioners (2004), the latter two from Orchises Press.  His poems have been published in numerous journals, and reprinted in the Best American Poets, Vocabula 2, Old Flame, Rabbit Ears, and The Doll Collection anthologies.  He lives with his family in Ridgewood, New Jersey.

© 2016 The Antioch Review