November 15, 2018
On Why I Like Travel Writing
Travel writing is a surprisingly divisive topic: I have quite a few literary friends who look down on the genre as a self-indulgent exercise, the product of privileged men and […]
April 2, 2016
Sound and Sensibility: or, How to Make Some Noise
My old high school French workbook carried the title Son et sens, or something very close to that, while my English textbook, in an odd coincidence, was called Sound and […]
December 17, 2015
A Last-Minute Shopper’s Guide to Children’s Poetry
Before my son was born, I memorized a poem. I know how this must sound to parents and non-parents: another hopelessly sentimental exercise that’s more about the papa than the […]
December 16, 2014
Patterns of Poetic Revolution
One of the most famous lines in English poetry about poetry is Moore’s “I, too, dislike it.” The interesting thing is just how much the best poets, historically, have […]
November 16, 2012
The Literary Critic Considered as an Illuminator of Manuscripts
Of the forms literary criticism can take, the lowest asserts the critic’s taste in reading as a fact about a book; the middle attempts to draw general conclusions about […]