Imagine the short story as poetry. And imagine that Alice Munro isn't merely a writer -- she is a literary alchemist, stirring, distilling, testing, and violating the language and conventions of the short story with breathtaking results. As fellow short-story writer Lorrie Moore observed, "It's the s

Composed, Dense, Domestic, Elegant, Low realism

Dense, Dreamy, Modernist literature, Tragic, Witty

Toronto-based designer Bruce Mau has long been associated with big projects and big ideas. His approach has been called 'intellectual,' 'ambitious,' and 'striking,' but Mau doesn't always ascribe such grandiose visions to his work. According to the designer, he simply chooses to respect the reader's

Clean, Dense, Huge, Postmodernism, Urban

The spiritual, the sublime, infinity itself: all seem to hover beneath the translucent surfaces of Mark Rothko's blurred and veil-like rectangles. The brilliantly colored blocks of his best-known works, distillations of all that this Lithuanian-born immigrant had learned during his first 15 years of

Abstract expressionism, Abstract painting, Dense, Depressive, Monochromatic, Post-painterly abstraction, Saturated, Silence