Waterfall

River Landscape

DANIELA ALCIVAR BELLOLIO
The image came to him all the time, uncontrollably, relentlessly: a face, combining incomprehension and terror perfectly, as though they were a natural combination. Pain was almost absent from this mixture, though he was certain that there, too, must have been pain. The image came to him all the time.

The Reading Life: You’re Going to Hear the Pages Turn

WILLIE PERDOMO
You didn’t go to school to learn how to be a writer. You wrote. So, I dropped out of my first attempt at college after my second year. Dropped out of my second attempt at college after two semesters. You can’t learn to be a writer. But you can wear yourself out garnering experience.

Anna Malihot and Olena Jenning's headshots

August 2025 Poetry Feature: Anna Malihon, translated by Olena Jennings

ANNA MALIHON
The girl with a bullet in her stomach / runs across the highway to the forest / runs without saying goodbye / through the news, the noble mold of lofty speeches / through history, geography, / curfew, a day, a century / She is so young that the wind carries / her over the long boulevard between bridges

Hitting a Wall and Making a Door: A Conversation between Phillis Levin and Diane Mehta

DIANE MEHTA and PHILLIS LEVIN
This conversation took place over the course of weeks—over daily phone calls and long emails, meals when they were in the same place, and a weekend in the Connecticut countryside. The poets share what they draw from each other’s work, and the work of others, exploring the pleasures of language, geometric movement, and formal constraint.

From IHOP

LUCHIK BELAU-LORBERG
It frustrated me, probably because I’m that way too, what with the unread books and dirty dishes. So IHOP made sense for us both. Like all quintessentially American fast food chains, it’s instrumental, noncommital, infinitely replicable. In other words—simple, safe, unmournable by design.

Cover of Willa Cather's O Pioneers!

What We’re Reading: August 2025

AIDAN COOPER
A duck paddling in a pond is a memorial to the passage of time; winter snow doesn’t represent death nor sleep, but rather life at its most ferocious. With Cather, the world is flush with a force so powerful it can’t be predicted or contracted or even known, only guessed at and trusted in. A magic rushes from every stream, from every hog’s bark.

Using The Common in my first-year seminars has been fun, fruitful, and helpfully startling for these classes.”

—Martha Cooley, Associate Professor of English, Adelphi University Receive classroom subscription discounts, lesson plans, and more when you TEACH THE COMMON »

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

Home