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 […]
June 30, 2013
The Lost Books of Lord Byron
I have read somewhere that you cannot read in dreams, that there is some neurological block against processing written language. I don’t remember where, maybe in a dream. Because I […]
March 25, 2013
Why I Don’t Teach Poetry Writing
What are we teaching when we teach the writing of poetry? Much of what we call the “teaching” of poetry is actually the teaching of contemporary conventions governing poetry. […]
April 23, 2012
The Two Unsurpassable Poems in the English Language
Every successful poem is unsurpassable in its own way. Even a brief rhyme, like— John Donne, Anne Donne, Undone. —cannot be improved upon, repeated, or replicated. It is a […]