July 1, 2009
Night Hawks
Your right is to action alone; never to its fruits at any time. Never should the fruits of action be your motive; never let there be attachment to inaction in […]
April 1, 2009
Bluebeard Bellow
Perdition catch my soul But I do love thee! And when I love thee not, Chaos is come again. —Othello The sacrificially monogamous Scott Fitzgerald, a shrewd, indeed prophetic observer […]
April 1, 2009
The Duct-taped Side of the Moon
Rip Van Winkle and the Separation (with a Primer of Twenty-six Parenthetical Notes on the Sacred) … apparently the lawless plunderers of the orchard and the corn field, are, in […]
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 […]
January 1, 2009
Making and Taking
The prickly territorialism of poets is legendary, from asides made by Catullus at the expense of Suffenus, to John Dryden’s writing “Mac Flecknoe” so as to put Thomas Shadwell in […]
January 1, 2009
The Tribal Knot: Ties That Bind and Break Us
No living member of our family has ever seen it. Nor did Bessie or her siblings ever speak of such an object. But informants insist that an ancestral “hair picture” […]
October 1, 2008
Displaced Persons
The Visible Head was a transparent model of the human head built to scale. The neck vertebrae were stacked one upon the other, forming a stalk, and a skull fit […]
October 1, 2008
‘Balm after Violence’: Louise Glück’s “Averno”
To evade or survive disaster is to enter into an odd, almost phobic relation to it: we think of it, but we do not. We feel that it touched and […]
October 1, 2008
Memory Is Key
From the book Children of Fire, Children of Water My oldest nephew, Maurus, said—what year I don’t remember exactly but maybe twenty or so years ago—”I remember the day […]
July 1, 2008
Of Squirrels and Men
1. The squirrels across the river in Illinois were coal black. They had bushy black tails, dark darty heads. In bright sun the fur gleamed: public parks overrun by mink […]
July 1, 2008
The Simplest Questions
“Meredith,” Aliana says, “you talk about your sons all the time. I think you must be a wonderful mother. I think you should let me come live with you.” Aliana […]
April 1, 2008
Winding Threads
To see a World in a Grain of Sand And Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. —William Blake […]