April 29, 2015
Drunken Savages with Quill Pens
At one point in his Philosophical Letters on the English, in which he observed the culture and society of France’s rival across the Channel, Voltaire, that paragon of French neoclassical […]
March 9, 2015
What More?: The Contrarian Poetics of Daniel Brown
Not to set up an unnecessary straw man, but a few assumptions about the Nature of Poetry seem current in our moment: That irrationality is inherently more poetic than […]
March 3, 2015
Night Thoughts (I)
Dickinson’s dashes and erratic capitalizations seem unusual or eccentric only to those who are unfamiliar with 19th century letter-writing. Byron’s letters, for example, are punctuated entirely in Dickinsonese, and similarly […]
February 7, 2015
#poetinspaceproject
We’ve sent animals and plants into outer space and observed them. We’ve sent scientists of various disciplines to run experiments—that is, to do their work in that environment and […]
January 2, 2015
When Goethe Met Napoleon
During Napoleon’s 1808 campaign in Germany, he visited his favorite author, Goethe. The two giants of the age met twice, once at Weimar and once at Erfurt. Andrew Roberts’s […]
December 16, 2014
Patterns of Poetic Revolution
One of the most famous lines in English poetry about poetry is Moore’s “I, too, dislike it.” The interesting thing is just how much the best poets, historically, have […]
December 11, 2014
Martyr Stories, Past and Present
Some of the most popular stories in medieval Europe were tales of saints and martyrs. Many of the hagiographies were essentially martyr stories as well, seeing as most early Christians were […]
November 24, 2014
Metafascistical: On Christianity and Marxism
The gospel of radical equality: Whether it’s the community of the Faithful or the united workers of the world, Christianity or Marxism, this is a key selling-point. All […]
October 19, 2014
The iPhone Considered as a Work of Art
Is my iPhone a 21st century work of art? The exquisite touch of realism in the faint shadows under the icons at the bottom: The sleek, Brancusi-like sleekness of line […]
September 5, 2014
Political Poetry
Should poets speak truth to power? Is it their role to court censorship, to call out social injustices, to commentate, to dare reveal political iniquity for what it is […]
July 12, 2014
Twin Towers of the Intellect
Both the theologian, advancing abstract definitions of Deity as the Ground of Being, transcendent of language and intellection, the impersonal prime mover, hardly so limited and vengeful and silly as […]
May 27, 2014
Ars Prosaica: On Lines and Sentences
When I have a point to make, I write prose; when I have a sound to make, I write verse. This is a distinction based on ends. There is […]