Willard Spiegelman is the Hughes Professor of English at Southern Methodist University and the editor-in-chief of Southwest Review.
Nonfiction
Winter 2014
Mark Strand’s Luminous Nostalgia
An already tottering, manipulative king sets the action going in Shakespeare’s King Lear when he announces disingenuously that he plans to “unburdened crawl toward death.” Although a king does not […]
Poetry
Summer 2008
‘Tis Yet to Come
The night is clear; the air is full of fall. The trees begin to think of changing shape, Of losing leaves, of stripping down to bare Essentials. No need to […]
Book Reviews
Spring 2007
‘Naked without Line-Ends’: Robert Lowell in His Letters
The Letters of Robert Lowell. Edited by Saskia Hamilton. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. 852 pp. $40.00. In the name of full disclosure, I must begin this […]
Book Reviews
Autumn 2006
Jorie Graham Talking
Overlord by Jorie Graham. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. 93 pp. $22.95 In “Posterity,” the last of the twenty-five poems in her new book, Jorie Graham says, twice, “I have […]
Book Reviews
Winter 2005
The Achievement of Robert Lowell
Collected Poems by Robert Lowell, edited by Frank Bidart and David Gewanter. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. 1187 pages. $45.00. The publication of Robert Lowell’s Collected Poems […]
Book Reviews
Spring 2003
Repetition and Singularity
The Seven Ages by Louise Glück. New York: HarperCollins, Ecco Press, 2002. 68 pp. $23.00. Never by Jorie Graham. New York: HarperCollins, Ecco Press, 2002. 112 pp. $22.95. Books by […]
Book Reviews
Summer/Fall 1999
How Poetry Works
The Work of Poetry by John Hollander. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. 318 pages. $40, hardcover. Whenever one becomes gloomy about the state of American culture, arts and letters, […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1999
What to Make of an Augmented Thing
Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt by Amy Clampitt. New York: Knopf, 1997. 471 pages. $30.00. Amy Clampitt looked like a tea-cozy; lived like a bohemian; thought like a radical; sounded, […]
Book Reviews
Summer/ Autumn 1997
Scholarly Designs
Poetry and Criticism, 1940-1995 by Robert von Hallberg, Evan Carton, and Gerald Graff. Volume 8. The Cambridge History of American Literature. General editor Sacvan Bercovitch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1995
History by Many Hands
The Columbia History of American Poetry by Jay Parini, editor, and Brett C. Millier, associate editor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. 894 pp. $59.95, cloth. David Perkins is the […]
Nonfiction
Spring 1991
Heirs and Heirlooms: The Legacy of Elizabeth Bishop and James Merrill
Of the “new” Formalism, as of the New Historicism, it may be said that new presbyter is but old priest writ large: which means, first of all, that form and […]