Esquire’s New Texas Editor Shakes Up a Storied Mag, The Anti-PhotoShopping Fantasy & a Great Poet’s Dissed

Our editors are a diverse lot, and are constantly perusing a long and broad list of publications. Fashion? Art? Architecture? Culinary studies? Semantics? It’s all here. In What We’re Reading, PaperCity shares the wealth.

Wallace Stevens was a great poet, and many of his lines are etched forever in countless minds. This, for example, the poem “Gubbinal.”

That strange flower, the sun,
Is just what you say.
Have it your way.

The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.

That tuft of jungle feathers,
That animal eye,
Is just what you say.

That savage of fire,
That seed,
Have it your way.

The world is ugly,
and the people are sad.

Such beauty and wonder, but then, why is Stevens and his work not better appreciated? It’s a travesty, writes Bruce Bawer.

Nina Simone made music and art that wore her (and often, her audiences) out. She was a prodigy, angry, gifted, driven. And her influence cannot be overstated. John Lahr reviews a new book on the Diva.

Esquire has a new editor, and he was born and bred in Texas. Let’s hope he revives the somewhat lackluster title to its former glory years. Click here for a look.

ModCloth is hot. It doesn’t Photoshop its models, but that doesn’t mean it’s not peddling a fantasy. Read this and decide for yourself.

Lord Byron. I never tire of his poetry, and I’ve loved reading about his life of adventure, crime, and scandal. I’d love to know what was in those burned memoirs, though.