No doubt you have seen this headline from The Onion, one of their best: “Unconventional Director Sets Shakespeare Play In Time, Place Shakespeare Intended.” In recent years, the young director Arin Arbus (the daughter of the recently deceased actor Allan... Continue reading

I want to tell you about one of my favorite poems at the moment. It’s from Lord Byron’s Foot, by George Green, which was selected last year by David Mason for The New Criterion Poetry Prize and recently published by... Continue reading

If you can keep your head, while Dennis Hopper recites Rudyard Kipling’s “If” on the Johnny Cash Show, then you are a better man than me, my son. Check it out: The poem (still wildly popular in England) and Hopper... Continue reading

Of poetry, Marianne Moore famously wrote: “I, too, dislike it.” I wonder what she might have said about poetry readings? Moore herself was, I think, a charming reader, but, like her poems, also idiosyncratic. Sometimes the recording is at fault... Continue reading

I like E. A. Robinson. I really do. No, I mean it. I really like his stuff much of the time. Especially the lyrics. The long poems, not so much (except maybe as sleep aids). Well, anyway, I want to... Continue reading

Here's a little intro I wrote for Don Paterson, who read at the 92nd Street Y last night with Paul Muldoon. It's not much of anything, and certainly not even a shadow of Paterson's gorgeous reading, but it has a... Continue reading

My squib today is about the epigraph to The Waste Land, which I had forgotten refers to the Sybil of Cumae, about whom more below. I’ve read the epigraph (and its translation) many times in the Norton Anthology and more... Continue reading

Here's a thought I had rereading Yeats's slightly curious and gorgeous-sounding late poem "Long-Legged Fly." I am pasting it below, so you can judge for yourself. If you are game for this miniature experiment in what Christopher Ricks might call... Continue reading

Dianne Blakely is a phenomenal poet, and just now she's publishing a series of articles on Swampland.com about lesser-known but wonderful Southern poets that is well worth a look. First up are Lisa Russ Spaar, Molly Bendall, and Brian Teare,... Continue reading

Swallow Press & Book Culture invite you to a reading to celebrate The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets with Daniel Brown, John Foy, George Green & Molly McQuade. Introduced by David Yezzi Wednesday, February 17, at 7:00 p.m. Book... Continue reading

There's a provocative article in the current issue of the London-based magazine Standpoint titled "Eliot versus Hardy" by Dan Jacobson, an emeritus professor at University College. In it, Jacobson tells of an interesting reversal in his literary tastes: he began... Continue reading