January 1, 1968
A Theater of Possibilities
On May 5, 1967, the following item appeared in the Roanoke, Va., morning paper: A group of pickets, carrying signs protesting society news policies of The Roanoke Times and The […]
November 1, 1967
Landscape with Maple Leaf (The Canadian Readers, 1922-35)
I remember the dog. He was a Spitz, I think or a mongrel with a spitzy tail, and he balanced on his hind legs on the cover of the Canadian […]
November 1, 1967
O What a Man Was O. Henry
Everybody wants to have something alive to call his own, to believe is his alone, to watch, to remember, to love, to worry about, to take pride in, to believe […]
September 1, 1967
Mississippi
To Justine and Balthazzar and Larry Durrell and Hank Miller and all the gang at Grove Press without whom this could never have been written. I am accustoming myself to […]
September 1, 1967
A Poet’s Private Zoo
Being a random exhibit of some specimens therein; what in them is curious or strikingly common. And all with the reservation, of course, that the poet, or keeper, is the […]
March 1, 1967
Misunderstanding Media: Obscurity as Authority
In the beginning was the word. Or, rather, the word was the word, and it was with God. Now, as we know, it is with Herbert Marshall McLuhan, and “the […]
January 1, 1967
The Ideal
Why do I not adopt italic handwriting? My present writing has nothing to be said for it: it is arbitrary, ugly, and illegible, and certain characters have recently deteriorated to […]
November 1, 1966
Interview with Harrison Byrd
SWING: Mr. Byrd, why do you write lyric poetry? BYRD: You want me to tell the truth? SWING: Of course. BYRD: This talk ain’t being bugged, is it? SWING: No, […]
June 1, 1966
Coming Sun. Mon. Tues.
“The bitterness and urgency of today’s rebellious youth . . . tender and lyrical . . . A social document of aimless teenagers seeking their identity . . . evocative […]
June 1, 1966
A Conference with “Copey”
For a decade or so before and after the turn of the century, there was on the faculty of Harvard University such a galaxy of distinguished professors—William James, Kittredge, Palmer, […]
October 1, 1965
Kurosawa’s Humanism
It is fourteen years now since Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece Rashomon burst on the world, evoking reactions ranging from waspish—”slow, complacent, Louvre-conscious, waiting-for-prizes” (Manny Farber in The Nation)—to ecstatic—”It is a […]
October 1, 1965
Not on Their Toes
The Winter 1964 issue of The Kenyon Review, in its dedication to John Crowe Ransom, remarked that “there was very little American criticism of any value before the 1930s.” The […]