November 6, 2018
On Titles
It’s always amusing to read about the original titles of famous novels. A few years ago an infographic from Jonkers Rare Books made the rounds on the Internet and revealed […]
November 2, 2018
The Poetics of Disbelief
In 1817, Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously coined the term “suspension of disbelief,” meaning a willingness to silence one’s critical faculties and believe in something purely conjectural for the sake of […]
October 26, 2018
On Character Names
Picking a character name is often as hard as writing the first line of a new novel or story—the kind of specific and essential task that often halts any momentum […]
October 25, 2018
E.M. Forster on Fantasy and Prophecy
There is a strange distinction made in the later chapters of E.M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel, a collection of lectures the author gave at Cambridge in 1927. I’ve already […]
October 22, 2018
Clifton, Pain, and Poetry
If you haven’t read Lucille Clifton’s “Wishes for Sons” before, you might assume from the title that it’s a poem about hoping for sons – a mother’s prayerful request for a […]
October 22, 2018
VERVE {IN} VERSE: IN CONVERSATION WITH MONICA LEWIS
Note: Verve {in} Verse is my new poet-focused feature here at The Kenyon Review in which I converse with poets about their work and interests both on and off […]
October 15, 2018
Was Philip Roth a White Male Author?
It’s been four months now since Philip Roth died, long enough in our fast-paced media world that all the eloquent and moving obituaries have largely dissolved into a broader consensus […]
October 8, 2018
On The English Patient
Last week, a piece called “The Movie Assassin” made the rounds on social media, part personal essay on the struggles of being a movie reviewer, part analysis of our society’s […]
October 2, 2018
Poetry for People Who Hate Poetry – October
This is a love story. This is the story that led me here, writing to you about how and why I fell in love with poetry, and what I think […]
October 1, 2018
On Writing What You Know
I have in my hands the final volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle—it has the now-familiar square shape of an Archipelago Books publication and a yellow cover with an […]
September 30, 2018
Verve {in} Verse: In Conversation with Edward Vidaurre
Note: Verve {in} Verse is my new poet-focused feature here at The Kenyon Review in which I converse with poets about their work and interests both on and […]
September 29, 2018
New Origins
Poetry may often come to us in small packages and brief passages, but poetry is rooted in our big human questions: who are we? how (and why) did we get […]