Great Regulars: The failure of the soldier

to master the simplest martial maneuver and its repercussions, matched with the unease felt towards what war requires of men to whom fighting is anathema, keep the humanity of this figure intact despite the demoralizing circumstances. Challenges to one's integrity come in forms other than combat, though, as the first section of "The Consumptive.

from Powells: Review-A-Day: The Bard of Gormenghast

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[Alice] Walker tells of being nominated for the 1974 National Book Award in poetry, along with [Audre] Lorde and Adrienne Rich. "Audre and I suspected the winner would be Adrienne--no black woman poet had ever been selected before," she writes. Lorde telephoned Walker and read a statement she had crafted with Rich announcing that whoever won "would accept the award in the names of the other two, as well as in the name of all women." Rich did win, and, in one of feminism's finest moments, she read their statement from the stage.

from Powells: Review-A-Day: Poet in Prose

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