March 20, 2012
Three Mini-Reviews
We’ve recently featured some wonderful reviews of poetry collections on KROnline, including Craig Santos Perez’s discussion of three first books by Latino poets and Kristen Evans’ consideration of beauty and […]
March 18, 2012
The Unwritten Late-Life Poetry of John Keats as Adumbrated in a Posthumous Epistle
T. S. Eliot says somewhere Keats’s poetry hadn’t yet evolved to the point where it could express the philosophical mind we find in the Letters. Keats, at the time of […]
March 13, 2012
“I wanted to speak about my event, but he insisted on history”: Jill Magi’s SLOT
To say that Jill Magi’s SLOT documents the experience of visiting a memorial or museum risks making the work sound smaller than it is. But what a complex achievement: the […]
March 7, 2012
Notes on Capital-T Tragedy
1. Why it started with the Greeks and showed up again with the Elizabethans. What makes a tragedy tragic—as opposed to a story with a sad ending—is that the sufferer […]
February 25, 2012
Poetry, Prose, and Prosetry: Shakespeare’s Hybrid Vigor
Prose took over storytelling (both in narrative and dramatic form) beginning in the 17th century. The prose shift in full-scale narrative commences with Quijote, which is why critics have […]
February 25, 2012
Translation and money laundering
A friend just sent me a link to this excellent interview at the Loggernaut reading series (dateless, it seems, and also timeless?) with Ammiel Alcalay—author, most recently, of “neither wit […]
February 23, 2012
And Another Thing:
My favorite word in the English language (at least for today) is and. I’ve realized it’s the basis of my metaphysics—many Gods and one Brahman—as well as of my literary […]
February 23, 2012
Matchup #1: O Rare Ben Jonson vs. A Little-Known 15th Century Welsh Poet
In any discussion of elegies for a lost child, Ben Jonson’s frequently comes up. You may know the one I’m talking about: Farewell, thou child of my right hand, […]
February 22, 2012
Someone Wrote You a Letter
You know you should write but you don’t. I don’t. Let’s be clear: I’ve neglected my blog for weeks now, though I love it. And it took three weeks to […]