Supplementary » July 6, 2005

To a Friend

(in the style of Pablo Neruda)

BY Adrián Bleifuss Prados

James Weinstein: The Legacy

Not a Dead Ender
By G. William Domhoff
Old Terrain, New Insights
By Ron Radosh
Muckraker By Studs Terkel
Creative Devotion
By David Moberg
Unapologetic Radical
By Laura Washington
The Historian We Need
By Michael Kazin
Guts and Tenacity
By Scott McLemee
Ambiguious Legacy
By James B. Gilbert
Throw Off the Saddles and Dare to Think By Edward "Buzz" Palmer
Last Request By Melissa Byrne
To a Friend
By Adrian Bleifuss Prados

You are the best American,
a child with obnoxious optimism.
You are loud and wonderfully impure.
You are a cook and a schemer.
I know the social ferment of your kitchen.
You have plans and programs and radical recipes

to fan the flames of discontent.

You live for the new city,
for its justice,
for the sunny freedom of its broad avenues.

And although we live in an age of smug generals
and rivers of snake oil,
I see your city shining in the distance.

ABOUT THIS AUTHOR

Adrian Bleifuss Prados is a Chicago-based social critic currently serving in the reserve army of labor. He graduated from Haverford College, where he studied history.

More information about Adrián Bleifuss Prados