December 31, 2007
What Rhymes with an Emoticon?
Let me share a poem that comes to mind along with “Auld Lang Syne,” Richard Kenney‘s “New Year, with Nipperkin.” On first reading it speaks to feast-day feelings: mundane “disarray” […]
December 30, 2007
Thanks Meg!
If you haven’t seen it on the inside back cover of the new issue of KR, there’s a tribute to Meg Galipault, and the role Meg played over the past […]
December 28, 2007
“IN ORDER TO MAKE A PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL MACHINE, IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT.”
Last month Daniel Dennett gave a talk at Amherst College, titled “The Evolution of Evitability: What Is Determined Is Not Inevitable.” I wish that I could tell you all about […]
December 27, 2007
An Important Message from The Editors
December 25, 2007
May we all be moved by poetry this holiday season.
Even Wall Street poetry. I would not like it here or there I would not like it anywhere I do not like your CDO I do not like it, Broker […]
December 25, 2007
Swarm Logic
What makes a book of poems? What calls a group of poems together? What kinds of progressions and disunities give life to the collection? These are questions I’ve been tangled […]
December 23, 2007
The Strangeness of Reading
In his consideration of Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid (Harper, 2007), Caleb Crain notes, “Taking the long view, it’s not the neglect of reading that has to be explained […]
December 23, 2007
Sunday Funnies: “You won’t always feel so depressed! Cheer up!”
Today’s cartoon was contributed by Mathew Digges. As the year winds down, I can’t help but reflect on my past year of writing. There were the rejection slips, sure: These […]
December 21, 2007
You forgot an anniversary.
Here’s a little proof of the power of clever fiction, not far off from “A Modest Proposal” or “War of the Worlds.” This little gem came to me from a […]
December 19, 2007
Erisichthon
This post is the work of Jonathan Crimmins. A few days ago, my son and I read Bulfinch’s version of a story found in Book VIII of Ovid about King […]
December 18, 2007
On Writing and Teaching
I was saddened yesterday to learn of the death of Diane Wood Middlebrook, poet, critic, literary biographer, and emeritus professor of English at Stanford University. I took a graduate seminar […]
December 18, 2007
What We Owe the New Critics
A testament to New Criticism from The Contemporary Poetry Review will arrive in 2008. Remember Cleanth Brooks? R.P. Blackmur? Randall Jarrell? John Crowe Ransom? They weren’t the first to theorize […]