January 1, 2009
Elizabeth Bishop, Critic
Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters. Edited by Robert Giroux and Lloyd Schwartz, New York: Library of America, 2008. 975 pp. $40.00 hardcover. In one volume, here we have […]
October 1, 2008
The Casual Reader
As the pile by my bedside grows, and the piles in various corners of my house grow, I feel both happy and alarmed. Happy because I know there will never […]
April 1, 2008
By Increments
The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems 1972-2007. By Albert Goldbarth. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 2007. 370 pp. $26.00, hardcover. The Corpse Flower: New and Selected Poems. By Bruce […]
April 1, 2008
The Casual Reader
Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life. By Allen Shawn. New York: Viking, 2007. 288 pp. $24.95. For me, it’s the trains. As a resident of a […]
October 1, 2007
The Casual Reader
Two for the Road: Our Love Affair with American Food by Jane and Michael Stern. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006, 304 pp. $24.00. Not long ago, heading home […]
April 1, 2007
Came Glancing like an Arrow
Love, Amy: The Selected Letters of Amy Clampitt. Edited by Willard Spiegelman. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. 336 pp. $41.50. Today the Moving Finger usually presses a keyboard […]
April 1, 2007
Listening to the Mourners
A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright. Edited by Annie Wright and Saundra Rose Maley, with Jonathan Blunk. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. 633 pp. $40.00. […]
April 1, 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 […]
April 1, 2007
The Casual Reader
Arthur & George by Julian Barnes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 2006. 400 pp., $24.95. I had not intended to read this book. Although I read and completely loved, […]
January 1, 2007
The Casual Reader
The Devil’s Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival among America’s Great White Sharks by Susan Casey. New York: Owl Books, 2006. 304 pp. $25.00. The killing took place […]
October 1, 2006
Introduction
A new book of poems comes into the world more by stealth than splash. Typically a new book will sell a thousand copies, maybe wo thousand, during its first year. […]
October 1, 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 […]