Younger Poets
Autumn 1941
Notes on a New England Winter
I. From the cold streets of CambridgeThe lapis and basalt of St. Paul’sMakes disturbing division, a goldenAnd Byzantine disarray. Hath notSome golden Paleologus of the City CouncilOrdained this disorderly splendor?Jumbled […]
Poetry
Summer 1986
To Dante
To write an epic with an all-star cast,Even the extras somebodies in their day,To have for theme the whole of historyWith plenty to spare, to finish all that upBy falling […]
Poetry
Summer 1986
Theater of the Absurd
How strange the movie in the lonesome cave, Whereat the helpless, unprovided man, Lying as dead, does nothing on his own Yet is responsible for all that’s done, Inventing the […]
Poetry
Summer 1986
A Reader of Mysteries
”a book too mad to read Before one merely reads to pass the time.” He reads to pass the time, and it seems to work: Time passes. Often as not, […]
Poetry
Summer 1986
Two-Person/Zero-Sum
The serious boy playing himself at chess Always contrives to win, but subtly enough That his obliging loser across the board Will never realize what made him make The plausible […]
Poetry
Summer 1983
Gnomic Variations for Kenneth Burke
An answer can seem wholly radiant only with those for whom the question itself has radiance.—A Rhetoric of Motives Ⅰ The only reason I’d care to be a king Would […]
Poetry
Summer 1983
Marvell
Slow, dear Marvell? Vegetables are slow?Your mistress may be, empires surely are,Even love, given a millennial Reich to grow. But here it isn’t August yet, and yetThe painted gourd’s already […]
Poetry
Summer 1983
First Light
Only for wanting to see the world made new In every weather, growing its colors again Out of the brown, grey, black, the muted flowers In Lennahan’s garden beginning to […]
Poetry
Summer 1983
In Memory of the Master Poet Robert Browning
Remembering that century and the one before That seemed such inexhaustible springs of song, Di quell’amor and Dove sono and the rest, Orpheus wondering what he’d do without Eurydice, the […]
Book Reviews
Autumn/ September 1969
Shorter Reviews: The Complete Poems
The Complete Poems by Randall Jarrell. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $10.00. Language is a great magic. The young poet turns it on and it begins to tell him wonderful things, […]
Poetry
Summer 1964
Summer’s Elegy
Day after day, day after still day, The summer has begun to pass away. Starlings at twilight fly clustered and call, And branches bend, and leaves begin to fall. The […]
Poetry
Summer 1964
Interiors
Small flame pointing, shadowing, picking out Black lacquer, bronze, blue velvet, a tassel That sweeps the chequered floor. God of battles, Bless these Thy banners. Smoke and the smell of […]
Poetry
Spring 1964
Learning by Doing
“constructive technological destructiveness”—Marcuse, Eros & Civilization They're taking down a tree at the front door, The power saw is snarling at some nerves, Whining at others. Now and then it […]
Poetry
Spring 1964
For Robert Frost, in the Autumn after His Death
"There may be little or much beyond the grave, The strong are saying nothing till they see." All on the mountains, as on tapestries Reversed, their threads unreadable though clear, […]
Poetry
Winter 1964
The Human Condition
In this motel where I was told to wait, The television screen is stood before The picture window. Nothing could be more Use to a man than knowing where he's […]
Nonfiction
Spring 1959
The Poetry of Reed Whittemore
The poetry of Reed Whittemore has not, so far as I know, had the attention it deserves at the hands of serious readers. It is occasionally, in reviews, acknowledged to […]
Book Reviews
Autumn 1958
Iniquity It Is; But Pass the Can
A. E. Housman: Scholar and Poet by Norman Marlow. University of Minnesota. $3.50. Mr. Marlow contends that his poet, for whom he feels “admiration and even veneration,” has been ill-treated, […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1958
Younger Poets: The Lyric Difficulty
A Case of Samples by Kingsley Amis. Harcourt. $3.50. Letter from a Distant Land by Philip Booth. Viking. $3.00. Adam’s Footprint by Vassar Miller. New Orleans Poetry Journal. $2.00 (soft-bound […]
Fiction
Summer 1957
A Delayed Hearing
Miss Mindhart’s taste in personal adornment, Mrs. Haxton’s taste in religions, these may be said to have done the damage. Miss Mindenhart, a large, greying woman who may once have […]
Book Reviews
Spring 1957
The Morality of Art
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. Two Volumes. Olympia Press, Paris, France. My Poor Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov. Doubleday. $3.50. My Admiration for the writings of Vladimir Nabokov began in college, when […]
Nonfiction
Autumn 1956
The Marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta
Those who believe that the “real meaning” of Shakespeare’s Plays consist in the one instruction, “to thine own self be true”—a principle of behavior distinguishing Iago and Edmund not less, […]
Fiction
Spring 1956
An Encounter with the Law
In Indian summer, while the sun still blazed and the trees began to turn, Samuel Amram drove up through New England to view the colors of the Fall. He made […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1956
Just a Good Poet
Collected Poems, 1955 by Robert Graves. Doubleday. $4.50. The dominant criticism of the day is a criticism which explains things; it seems to have appeared as a response to […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1955
A Wild Civility
Collected Poems by Stephen Spender. Random House. $4.00. Selected Poems by Randall Jarrell. Knopf. $4.00. The Shield Of Achilles by W. H. Auden. Random House. $3.00. In taking Herrick’s phrase […]
Fiction
Summer 1955
Tradition
Below the village of Ravensburg, at the edge of the woods and facing the swampy bottom lands that spread to the river, old Mr. Birch had his cabin where he […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1955
Sansom’s Fictions
The Passionate North by William Sansom. Harcourt Brace. $3.50. Something Terrible, Something Lovely by William Sansom. Harcourt Brace. $3.50. A Bed Of Roses by William Sansom. Harcourt Brace. $3.50. Here […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1954
Three in One
The Waking. Poems: 1933-1953 by Theodore Roethke. Doubleday. $3.00. Poems 1940-1953 by Karl Shapiro. Random House. $3.00. Collected Poems by Yvor Winters. Denver: Alan Swallow, 1952. $3.50. Three Collections, […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1953
The Generation of Violence
The Collected Poems Of Dylan Thomas. New Directions. $3.75. The idea, the not altogether clear and distinct idea, that poetry should be “organic,” seeks to emphasize this distinction between writing […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1950
Poets in the Dark
Live Another Day by John Ciardi. Twayne. $2.00. Selected Poems by Elizabeth Daryush. Swallow Press. $2.50. Address To The Living by John Holmes. Twayne. $2.50. The Wind Of Time by […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1948
The Poets
Noah And The Waters by C. Day Lewis. Transatlantic Arts Inc. $2.00. A Way Of Happening by Ruth Herschherger. Pellegrini & Cudahy. $2.00. A Man In Midpassage by Norman Macleod. […]