May 2026 – BIG OTHER

Walt Whitman on Love, Beauty, Poetry, Peace, and More

Happy birthday, Walt Whitman! Here are some quotes from his writing: “I too am not a bit tamed,…

Happy birthday, Big Other contributor Meg Pokrass! Celebrate by reading these Pokrass fictions (with illustrations by Chris Vaughan), which we…

Happy birthday, John Barth! Here are some quotes from the author: “Self-knowledge is always bad news.” “[F]iction…

Happy birthday, Big Other contributor David M. Sheridan! Celebrate by viewing “Some Chairs at the Art Museum,” a Sheridan video…

Happy birthday, Ralph Waldo Emerson! Here are some quotes from his writing: “Neither dogmatize yourself, nor accept another’s…

Happy birthday, Bob Dylan! 85, today! Lucky to have seen this trickster and consummate artist perform live many times…

Happy Arrival Day, Sun Ra! Here are some quotes from the composer and musician: “I think of myself…

Happy birthday, Lucie Brock-Broido! Here are some quotes from the poet: “I, abstract, adoring, distant / And unsalvageable.”…

Happy birthday, Big Other contributor Stephen O’Connor! Celebrate by reading “And One by One They Disappeared,” an O’Connor” we published…

Happy birthday, W. G. Sebald! Here are some quotes from his writing: “It would be an ambition of…