September 1, 2018
“Polysituating”
The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable by Amitav Ghosh. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. 196 pp. $22.00. Polysituatedness: A Poetics of Displacement by John Kinsella. Manchester, UK: […]
July 1, 2018
“Our Abidance Along with Theirs”
Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character by Kay Redfield Jamison. Knopf, 2017. 532 pp. $29.95. Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast by […]
July 1, 2018
Eliot Agonistes
The Letters of T. S. Eliot. Volume 5, 1930-1931. Ed. Valerie Eliot and John Haffenden. London: Faber & Faber, 2014. lxi + 862 pp. £50. The Letters of T. S. […]
July 1, 2017
Nothing There: The Late Poetry of John Koethe
The Swimmer by John Koethe. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016. 96 pp. $23.00. John Koethe’s tenth book, The Swimmer, is the sum of its author’s contradictions. Koethe’s view of […]
July 1, 2017
Rereading Ransom
The Collected Poems of John Crowe Ransom, Editor Ben Mazer. Un-Gyve Press, 2015. 396 pp. $75.00. The Collected Poems of John Crowe Ransom, edited by Ben Mazer, is something […]
May 1, 2017
The Hidden History of Slavery
Homegoing by Yaa Cyasi. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. 305 pp. $26.95. The Slaves Cause: A History of Abolition by Manisha Sinha. New Haven: Yale UP, 2016. 768 pp. […]
January 1, 2017
Representative Men
Bastards of the Reagan Era by Reginald Dwayne Betts. Four Way Books, 2015. 72 pp. $15.95. The Orchard Green and Every Color by Zach Savich. Omnidawn, 2016. 96 pp. $17.95. […]
July 1, 2016
Walt Whitman and the Bohemians
Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians, by Justin Martin. Boston: De Capo, 2014. 339 pp. $29.24 hardcover. Whitman among the Bohemians, edited by Joanna Levin and Edward Whitley. […]
March 1, 2016
Paths of Glory
Some Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew. By Max Egremont. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. 337 pages. $28.00, hardcover. Chasing Lost Time: The Life of […]
November 1, 2015
“Tell Me Why I Shouldn’t Kill You”: On Jehanne Dubrow’s “The Arranged Marriage”
The Arranged Marriage, Jehanne Dubrow. University of New Mexico Press, 2015. 72 pp. $18.95, paperback. The title of Jehanne Dubrow’s new book, The Arranged Marriage, is suggestive of the Old […]
October 1, 2014
Riffing on America
The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Biography of the Song That Marches On. By John Stauffer and Benjamin Soskis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. 392 pp. $29.95, hardcover. […]
April 1, 2014
Doorstops and Leave-takings: Four Poets
Bewilderment. By David Ferry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.113 pp. $18.00, paperback. Collected Poems. By Jack Gilbert. New York: Knopf, 2012. 428 pp. $35.00, hardcover. Poems 1962-2012. By Louise […]