On the dedication page for Henry Hart’s recent biographical work, The Life of Robert Frost: A Critical Biography, we find a quote from Yeats: “The intellect of man is forced to choose / Perfection of the life, or of the work.” Using it as the book’s guiding principle, Hart may be provoking us to ask whether those, like Frost, who “perfect the work” should also be expected to “perfect the life.”
Rounding Out Robert Frost Read More »
In Her Body and Other Parties (Graywolf Press, 2017), Carmen Maria Machado explores the bodies, demons, and desires of twenty-first century women.
Bodies, Demons, Desires: A Review of “Her Body and Other Parties” Read More »
Of Silence and Song doesn’t just reward close, attentive reading. In fact, it demands it. Of Silence and Song is a highly lyric book, advancing a series of impressions rather than the march of a central, tightly reasoned argument.
Required Reading: Dan Beachy-Quick’s “Of Silence and Song” Read More »
Confessional poetry—particularly work that deals with the end of a relationship—is exceptionally tricky to pull off without coming across as navel-gazing and self-centered. Edith, however, is a remarkable work of pathos, using the inward gaze to illuminate both the self and everything around that self.
A Bird on Fire, Stuffed Inside Another Normal-Looking Bird: Meg Freitag’s “Edith” Read More »
The portrait these letters paint of an artist trying to hone his craft at all costs transforms them from obscure Proustiana into a richer portrait of Proust the man, neighbor, and writer.
Four Pheasants for Your Silence: A Review of Marcel Proust’s “Letters to His Neighbor” Read More »
Written in 1958 but given due packaging in a new book from Song Cave, Lionel Ziprin’s “Songs for Schizoid Siblings” are, at the simplest assessment, a historical oddity.
Sweetmeats to Cure: Lionel Ziprin’s “Songs for Schizoid Siblings” Read More »
The subtle mark of Smith’s excellence is how each poem arrives where it’s at—meeting both itself and the world, inhabiting them at once and entirely.
Loving the Good and No-Good Bones of It: A Review of Maggie Smith’s “Good Bones” Read More »
“Simple images, such as the dandelion in the sidewalk crack or ice in lemonade, invite us to compare our own experience and find meaning where there was none before. More complex, but equally intangible experiences can be found in poems like ‘Rearrangements,’ which explores the aftereffects of covert child abuse, although each victim is different.”
A Review of Carol Smallwood’s “In Hubble’s Shadow” Read More »
Think of Shapero instead as a kind of poetic Louis C.K. — the misery is part of the act. Yes, you’re supposed to laugh: “All I have coming in this / world is a joke that hits me later.” And like the best stand-up comedy routines, her poems have solid opening hooks, a finely wrought structure, and a resonance, a truth, beyond what is directly expressed.
A Joke That Hits You Later: A Review of Natalie Shapero’s “Hard Child” Read More »
“I think that I have always resisted the idea of objective cultural criticism in a vacuum. The subject lends itself to drawing connections to yourself — when I look at someone like Britney Spears, it isn’t just at the level of public scrutiny.”
On “All The Lives I Want”: An Interview with Alana Massey Read More »
