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Daegan Miller

@daeganmiller.bsky.social
1.8K followers 617 following 2.2K posts

Essayist and Critic. For all the beautiful radiant things. Book: *This Radical Land: A Natural History of American Dissent* bit.ly/2HYSaSK | Essays: bit.ly/2Gn3EPM

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Evan Kindley @evankindley.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I reviewed Emily Ogden's new book about Edgar Allan Poe for The New Republic newrepublic.com/article/2149...
newrepublic.com
How Edgar Allan Poe Mined His Own Misery
In Emily Ogden’s new book, Poe is not a concocter of hokey ghost stories. He is an excavator of repressed emotion.
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Joseph Henderson @josephenderson.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
On writing about forgiveness: “the possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility…is the faculty of forgiving…. Forgiving, in other words, is the only reaction which does not merely re-act but acts anew and unexpectedly.” -Hannah Arendt.
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Wish I was going to be in the Cambridge area for this.
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Andy Adams @flakphoto.news · 17/09/2026
Remembering Annie Dillard — some thoughts on writing, photography, and the total eclipse. Thanks for looking! www.flakphoto.news/p/rip-annie-...
flakphoto.news
RIP Annie Dillard
On writing, photography, and the total eclipse
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Hannah Arendt, giving pride to the antisocial among us.
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Since discovering @billorcutt.bsky.social noisy, angular, hypnotic, jagged work about 10 years ago, he’s become a mainstay in heavy rotation in my house. I just learned he’s just released *Four Louies Live*—not to be missed! fakeestates.bandcamp.com/album/four-l...
fakeestates.bandcamp.com
Four Louies Live, by Bill Orcutt
2 track album
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Oh, man, Annie Dillard has left us. I can’t overstate how important her writing and thinking has been for me, its influence, the pleasure it has brought. “The silence is all there is,” indeed. Here’s one of my cherished treasures—a 1st ed of *Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.*
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
This essay, by Colin Vanderburg, on (nominally) audiophilia, for @nplusonemag.com has got everything: humor (I laughed out loud at one point), esoteric arcana, cultural politics, deep intelligence, and a disarming earnestness. Check it out. www.nplusonemag.com/issue-54/ess...
nplusonemag.com
Heaven’s Melodic Strains | Colin Vanderburg
The Illinois Jacquet’s 1956 sextet rendition of “Harlem Nocturne” wasn’t simply playing but occurring, happening. Jimmy Jones’s piano glowed like the sun’s last gleam, taking the day with it. I fumble...
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
While I love Hannah Arendt’s books, I think she was at her best as an essayist. Here’s just one page of annotations for “Thinking and Moral Consideration*.
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John MacNeill Miller @snarlsdickens.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
It’s the release day for Sensoria: Attending to the Wonder and Vitality of Nature from @humansandnature.bsky.social! Tilly is excited to crack open her copy. I hope she enjoys my little contribution to the anthology…
A small brown dog sits on a white couch, perched just above a copy of Sensoria: Attending to the Wonder and Vitality of NatureA shot of the first page of “Our Time Is Limited,” an essay in the anthology Sensoria: Attending to the Wonder and Vitality of Nature
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Exactly the book I needed, right no in this moment, for thinking through Arendt.
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Niche post, I know, but I’ve reached this point in my journey with Hannah Arendt:
The title page for Hannah Arendt’s final volume *the Life of the Mind*, still in her typewriter when she died.
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Robert Rubsam @robrubsam.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
If you need a primer on Wendell Berry, Jed Purdy wrote a fantastic essay in @thenation.com about the man in all his complications: www.thenation.com/article/arch...
thenation.com
Wendell Berry’s Lifelong Dissent
At the core of both his writing and activism is the insight that we can’t imagine a harmonious future without confronting the destruction in our past.
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Oh man, Wendell Berry has passed on. I found myself always impressed with his thinking, even if often in disagreement. His *The Hidden Wound*, from 1970, linked race, labor, and land in a way that is still audacious, even today. Dust to dust.
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Matt Thiessen @mattthiessen.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Wendell Berry: “Though we have life, it is beyond us. We do not know how we have it, or why. We do not know what is going to happen to it, or to us. It is not predictable; though we can destroy it, we cannot make it. It cannot... be controlled." www.kentucky.com/news/local/a...
kentucky.com
‘Another great light gone out.’ Kentucky author, activist Wendell Berry dies at 92.
Wendell Berry championed small farms, agrarianism and conservation for decades.
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Ben Wurgaft @benwurgaft.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
"Emerging Writers" fellowship but it's not for early career people, it's for mid- or late-career writers to encourage them to emerge from their rejection-slip-strewn caves and occasionally talk to another human being and experience the existence we are ostensibly distilling into the purest of prose.
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
This books is reminding me of Camus’s line that nihilism is not the belief in nothing, it is the disbelief in everything that is. The word “vile” comes to mind. Though I’m only 250 pages in.
William Gass’s masturbatory book, *The Tunnel*.
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
What an excellent critical essay by Anahid Neressian on @joriegraham.bsky.social for @nybooks.com. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
nybooks.com
Refusing to Look Away | Anahid Nersessian
In Killing Spree, the poet Jorie Graham pursues an essentially ethical impulse to find a true language for the evil in the world.
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Emily Dickinson, quiet rebel.
1860 letter from Emily Dickinson: “the world is just a little place, just the red in the sky, before the sun rises, so let us keep fast hold of hands, that when the birds begin, none of us be missing.”
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Max Granger @maxgranger.info · 23/07/2026
At least 32 people have died at the hands of ICE and Border Patrol so far in 2026. These are their names.
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Emma Goldman, 1909. Happy 4th.
Emm Goldman’s *A New Declaration of Independence*
Emm Goldman’s *A New Declaration of Independence*
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
What a fantastic essay on the space of our digital world.
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Hey all--I've been spending more time on Instagram recently. I'll keep my presence here, but you can also find me over there: www.instagram.com/daegan_r_mil...
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The New York Review of Books @nybooks.com · 17/06/2026
Caroline Tracey (@cetracey.bsky.social) on the long history of proposals to suck up profits from the Great Salt Lake
nybooks.com
Putting the Lake to Work | Caroline Tracey
In November 2022, the Great Salt Lake dropped to a record-low water level. That winter, dust blew off newly exposed patches of the lakebed, clouding the
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Maximillian Alvarez @maximillianalvarez.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
I am excited to announce that I am working on a new book with @haymarketbooks.org and @inthesetimes.com, tentatively titled "AMERICAN SACRIFICE: Working People Talk About Fighting for Their Lives—and Our Future—in America's Sacrifice Zones"...
Non-official book cover for Maximillian Alvarez's new book project:

AMERICAN SACRIFICE: 
Working people talk about fighting for their lives—and our future—in America's sacrifice zones 

Coming soon...
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Philip Leventhal @philipleventhal.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
“He bore all the elements of approachability, arranged instead to disconcert.” In n+1, Nicholas Dames writes an excellent essay about William Gass. @nplusonemag.com @njdames.bsky.social www.nplusonemag.com/issue-53/rev...
nplusonemag.com
The High Style of the Hater | Nicholas Dames
If Gass entertained any escape fantasies, however, The Tunnel does not indulge them. It’s the big, the biggest, Man Alone in a House story. It’s an anti–systems novel, uninterested in conspiracist lin...
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Marthine Satris @msatris.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
"... You cannot hammer the truth into a person or turn your wrist and use the claw to pry it out. You cannot pound a nail into the sky. But the truth is there, and here, as blue, to repeat, as the sky, ..." From "In The Dark," by Susan Stewart poems.com/poem/in-the-...
poems.com
In the Dark
You cannot pound a nail into the sky.
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
So at the risk of immodesty, if you too are fatigued by the profound mismatch, in even very good analyses of the contemporary polycrisis, b/t the clarity of structural diagnosis and the “ta-da” clichés of solutionism tacked on at the end by law of the culture industry, you might like this
press.uchicago.edu
Action without Hope
A study of how writers from the early phases of our prolonged climate emergency used aesthetic strategies to redefine the category of action. What does it feel like to live helplessly in a world that ...
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Lydia Kiesling @lydiakiesling.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Writing is a craft that many dead people would have loved to learn and instead of making a society where everyone can learn we made a button that means no one will learn
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Laura Routh @laurarouth.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
A beautifully written and thoughtful essay! I’ve always found the strong response against @royscranton.bsky.social ‘s first book puzzling and often wondered how many people had bothered to read it.
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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 20/05/2026
Okay, so he's saying we need to go higher. I'm game.
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Guggenheim Collection @guggenheim.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
White Flower by Agnes Martin, 1960 botfrens.com/collections/212/conten…
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Gift of Lenore Tawney, 1963

© 2016 Agnes Martin/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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Mike Winter @mikedwinter.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
(Another!) excellent essay from Daegan Miller... Sobering realism and the deep question, "how does one commit to a future that cannot be imagined?"
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Lit Hub @literaryhub.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Is Roy Scranton actually “the ultimate doomist?” Or just misunderstood?
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Lessons in Living in the Anthropocene (From the World’s Most Pessimistic Climate Writer)
I remember the thrill of transgression I felt the first time I pulled Roy Scranton’s Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization off a shelf. It was at City Lights…
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Been itching to write this essay for years, and @literaryhub.bsky.social made it happen: on "the ultimate doomist" @royscranton.bsky.social his new book on ethical pessimism, and why it's important to read past title of his (in)famous *Learning to Die in the Anthropocene*. lithub.com/lessons-in-l...
lithub.com
Lessons in Living in the Anthropocene (From the World’s Most Pessimistic Climate Writer)
I remember the thrill of transgression I felt the first time I pulled Roy Scranton’s Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization off a shelf. It was at City Lights…
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Been itching to write this essay for years, and @literaryhub.bsky.social made it happen: on "the ultimate doomist" @royscranton.bsky.social his new book on ethical pessimism, and why it's important to read past title of his (in)famous *Learning to Die in the Anthropocene*. lithub.com/lessons-in-l...
lithub.com
Lessons in Living in the Anthropocene (From the World’s Most Pessimistic Climate Writer)
I remember the thrill of transgression I felt the first time I pulled Roy Scranton’s Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization off a shelf. It was at City Lights…
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Daegan Miller @daeganmiller.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
As a very proud UCP author, I'm delighted to support the peopIe who helped publish my book in their effort to unionize. Help them out by signing their petition here: We’re the UCP Workers Guild. Help our union get recognized! . Write one here: actionnetwork.org/letters/were...
actionnetwork.org
We’re the UCP Workers Guild. Help our union get recognized!
The University of Chicago Press produces and distributes books and journals that meet the highest standards of scholarship, foster public understanding, and enrich cultural life. For over 130 years, p...
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
Apparently, journals, universities and publishers cannot do it but the Oscars can
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Haymarket Books @haymarketbooks.org · 01/05/2026
Happy May Day! Our office is closed today; we’ll see you in the streets!
Anthropomorphic bread and roses walking hand in hand, holding aloft a banner that reads "We Want it All" 
The bottom says: Haymarket Books, Est. 2001, Chicago IL
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Sun Tzu's Art of Vore @rhena.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
is there any better metaphor for the democratic party than an old man on his deathbed trying to impede progress
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Caroline Tracey @cetracey.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
SALT LAKES is in the latest issue of @nybooks.com! www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
nybooks.com
This Bitter Earth | Rosa Lyster
The world’s salt lakes are the canary in the coal mine for the climate crisis, and they are shrinking at a drastic rate.
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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
the imperial mode of living —emblematized in plastics, cheap meat, throwaway packages, endless commodities, online slop, all of this predicated on the relentless enclosure of commons & ceaseless torching of fossil fuels— is a war on life itself other social forms are possible & we need them now
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Michael Metivier @grousehollow.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
The precise botanical term for mayapples is “freaky deaky.”
A bunch of burgeoning mayapple plants, which look like freaky green parasols with olive green stems
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 27/04/2026
If you're willing and able to help out Hampshire workers who are suddenly facing job loss, there's a fundraiser: www.helphampshireworkers.com
helphampshireworkers.com
Help Hampshire Workers | Support Hampshire Workers Today
Support Hampshire College staff and faculty facing job loss with emergency relief funds for essential needs. Contributions and support help provide immediate assistance during this critical time.
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Colin Dickey @colindickey.com · 25/04/2026
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
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