June 10, 2019
Poetry for People Who Hate Poetry – June
But does poetry actually change anything? Does it need to? Maybe poets are, as Percy Bysshe Shelley writes, “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Or maybe W.H. Auden is right that […]
April 2, 2019
Poetry for People Who Hate Poetry – April
Relax. This is not a column about iambic pentameter. This is a column about the secret history of the English language. But the story of English happens to be the story […]
August 30, 2013
This World: Dig It
All morning, from across the bogs and beyond the whale-road, tributes have been pouring in for Seamus Heaney. It’s a lovely thing to witness: words (by Heaney, by his admirers) […]
March 27, 2012
Namesakes: On Titles
A few weeks back, I was in Boston for a reading when a friend showed me the Amazon page for Jane Springer’s forthcoming book, Murder Ballad. My friend asked “Doesn’t […]