August 31, 2019
“The Prairie-Grass Dividing,” the Beer
The second in a series of seven Walt Whitman beer reviews: “The Distillation Would Intoxicate Me Also” There’s democracy in beer drinking, or so Americans like to believe. When the punditocracy […]
June 5, 2019
“Song of Myself,” the Beer
“Sobriety,” Walt Whitman wrote in 1842, is “that virtue which every mother and father prays nightly” will reside “in the character of their sons.” Tell that to Bell’s Brewery, which […]
May 31, 2019
Why American Poets Ought to Translate More Poems
As literary translators go, I am mostly a fraud, and thus beset by a fear that all frauds—from TV psychics to reality TV presidents—share: to be exposed by those who […]
September 11, 2018
Luck, Lit, & Gutter Spouts
I was twenty-three years old when I won the Hopwood Award for Poetry. A recent college grad, I lived in a leaky apartment that I’d furnished with lawn furniture and […]
July 26, 2017
NSFW: On “Hysterical Literature,” Leaves of Grass, and the Sexy Reading Movement
Somewhere in the foggy realm between performance art and porno, on a YouTube channel where a poem drives up page views, a woman reads aloud from a paperback book. She […]
January 15, 2017
An Open Letter from the Only Poet on the Professor Watchlist
Dear Charlie Kirk, Founder of Turning Point USA: It’s not every day that an American poet can address someone who thinks he is dangerous. For that alone I should thank […]
May 5, 2016
Why I’m Still Not Convinced that Meter is Physiological
I sparked a small feud last month when I wrote in this blog that “Iambic Pentameter Has Nothing to Do with Your Heart.” My essay took issue with a “pulse […]
April 16, 2016
Iambic Pentameter Has Nothing to Do with Your Heart
It is time that all poets, critics, and readers dispense with the following metaphor: the iamb is a heartbeat. Let us refrain from settling arguments (or starting them) by asking […]
December 22, 2015
Children’s Poetry: Four Short Takes
With just a few days until America’s bookstores close their doors and count their pennies, I thought it best to condense my final recommendations for children’s poetry. Here are four […]
December 17, 2015
A Last-Minute Shopper’s Guide to Children’s Poetry
Before my son was born, I memorized a poem. I know how this must sound to parents and non-parents: another hopelessly sentimental exercise that’s more about the papa than the […]
September 2, 2015
The Daniel Swiftboating of Helen Vendler
The knives are out again for Helen Vendler. In a recent review for The Spectator, Daniel Swift accuses the poetry critic of performing a bloodless “scientific evaluation of literature.” Her […]
July 29, 2015
The Poet’s Salter: An Appreciation of James Salter
About a year and a half ago I began writing a fan letter to James Salter. Salter was in residence at the University of Virginia, and this fact, I thought, […]