“When I stepped out onto El Prado after viewing the exhibition, I suddenly saw Balboa Park with different eyes, Iturbide’s eyes.”
Through Graciela Iturbide’s Eyes: Ritual, Identity, and the Poetry of Mexico
May Issue, 2026
A collection of all the articles we’ve published over the past month, for those who like to savor their Magpies’ tidings as an issue.
Magpies Mix Tape: Troubled Sleep
A playlist of songs about sleep, not sleeping, and dreams for these troubled times.
More Than Half a Poet: The Grasmere Journals
It’s a strange but probably not-so-strange thing that a beautifully-written account of the baking of bread, of illness and worry, of the beauty of the light on flying crows, the wind on the water, the glow through the mountains, would have such an enduring power to move us.
An Abject Human Failure
The myriad examples of artwork created by children in internment camp settings are evidence that the human spirit is strong and malleable, even under the most extreme conditions.
Letter From the Editor, April, 2026: Go along so
Spring ramblings.
The Legendary Iranian Poet Who Gives Me Hope
“Read Forugh’s poems and you’ll find the very forces that shape our moment: misogyny, censorship, nativism, consumerism, the annihilating violence of war. Read her poems and you’ll find that they, like all the best poems, don’t merely offer a reprieve from the abuses and terrors of the world, but a repudiation of the forces that make those abuses and terrors possible: ignorance and political regimes for which ignorance has been and will always be their life’s blood.”
Lola Álvarez Bravo: Picturing Mexico
Lola Alvarez Bravo, an oft-overlooked female artist, created profoundly personal works, which combined a radical humanism with experiments with the uncanny.
Syria, I Went Back
“And now, one year later, I would walk into an arrivals hall at Damascus airport filled with Syrian families crying and hugging separated sons, now-married daughters, and children that have never seen their homeland. So many tears.”
Lee Godie: Beauty in My Mind
“I always try to paint beauty, but some people say my paintings aren’t beautiful. Well I have beauty in my mind …”
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