Skip to content

Sign up for a small monthly payment and enjoy ads-free browsing at 3QD

Make a one-time donation and enjoy ads-free browsing at 3QD

Home
About Us
Monday Magazine
Archives
Support 3QD
Log In
Search for:

W. H. Auden reads ‘The Shield of Achilles’ (1953)

Posted on Friday, Apr 19, 2019 11:28AM by S. Abbas Raza

Post navigation

Trump’s America, Netanyahu’s Israel

Elemental haiku

Receive 3QD Posts by Email

Please fill out the form below to get our email with all the posts from the previous 24 hours, which is sent out a bit after midnight (NY City time) each day. This is completely free of charge for everyone.

	Name:
	Your email address:*

Please enter all required fields Correct invalid entries

Follow 3QD on Social Media

What People Say About 3QD

"3 Quarks is a daily must-read for intellectuals of all stripes. It is perhaps even smarter and better and more comprehensive than Arts & Letters Daily, the de facto gold standard of the smart set on the internet."

—Laura Claridge, former Professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy, and author of Romantic Potency: The Paradox of Desire, Tamara de Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence, and Norman Rockwell: A Life.

“From my perspective as an early modernist, what you’re undertaking is akin to the heroic labors of Renaissance compositors, who would (like you) read widely and excerpt and synthesize vast amounts of knowledge for others. A real service to the republic of letters.”

—Scott Newstok, Professor of English, Director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment, Rhodes College, and author of How to Think like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education.

"The algorithms that curate your social-media timeline do so with indifference and programmed greed. The humans who curate 3QD do so with love and well-aged wisdom. Read 3QD instead! It’s so much better!"

—Justin E. H. Smith, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Paris.

"Thanks for 3 Quarks Daily which has been very high on my reading list for several years now!"

—Huw Price, Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy and Fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. He is also co-founder, with Martin Rees and Jaan Tallinn, of a project to establish a Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.

"Just wanted you to know I’m one of many who reads and enjoys 3 Quarks....almost daily."

—David Byrne, musician, former lead-singer of the Talking Heads, artist, intellectual.

"It is a great honor to be mentioned in one of my two ONLY portals to the internet—and the world, since I do not read newspapers. My discipline, to avoid drowning in information, is not to cruise the web outside of these two points. I tried many sites; yours has CHARM."

—Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan. [The other site NNT is referring to is the excellent Arts & Letters Daily.]

"3QD is always interesting--you (and your other contributors) have a fine eye for good writing in both the arts and the sciences, which is a very rare thing indeed."

—Rochelle Gurstein, author of The Repeal of Reticence, and frequent contributor to The New Republic, Salmagundi, and American Scholar.

"For sheer elegance, wit and worldly wisdom when it comes to reading, editing, presenting the real news of the world... for liveliness, cosmopolitanism, range of scientific, philosophical, and literary curiosity in harvesting big and provocative ideas... for consistency of character and manners, ever above the ordinary... 3 Quarks stands alone. If 3 Quarks Daily were a person, wouldn't it be Proust?"

—Christopher Lydon, host of the excellent show "Open Source" on National Public Radio, author, media personality.

"I really appreciate your selection of generally sane and mostly stimulating articles. 3 Quarks Daily has been my goto website at the end of the day, and now also during the day!"

—Horst Ludwig Störmer, Nobel laureate in physics and emeritus professor at Columbia University.

"I look at your site every day. It's where the two cultures meet."

—Suketu Mehta, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Maximum City, winner of the O. Henry Prize, and frequent contributor to various newspapers and magazines.

Recent Comments on 3QD

3QD Design History and Credits

The original site was designed by S. Abbas Raza in 2004 but soon completely redesigned by Mikko Hyppönen and deployed by Henrik Rydberg. It was later upgraded extensively by Dan Balis in 2006. The next major revision was designed by S. Abbas Raza, building upon the earlier look, and coded by Dumky de Wilde in 2013. And this current version 5.0 has been designed and deployed by Dumky de Wilde in collaboration with S. Abbas Raza.

3 Quarks Daily

3 Quarks Daily started in 2004 with the idea of creating a curated retreat for everything intellectual on the web. No clickbait, no fake news, not just entertainment, but depth and breadth —something increasingly hard to find on the internet today. If you like what we do, please consider making a donation.