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PoetryMarch 31, 2016
Less Is Moore
Observations is one of the great verbal works of art of the 20th century, in part because of Marianne Moore’s infectious devotion to everything small.
James Longenbach
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Arts and EntertainmentFebruary 18, 2016
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Autobiography and MemoirOctober 8, 2015
How Patti Smith, Punk Chanteuse, Became the Irresistible Siren of Middle Age
Her latest memoir, M Train, feels guided simultaneously by determination and serendipity.
James Longenbach
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Language ArtsOctober 28, 2014
Drawing a Frame
In his music and his prose, Virgil Thomson perfected a whimsically deadpan sensibility.
James Longenbach
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Books and IdeasJune 3, 2014
James Joyce’s Untamable Power
Censors thought it dirty and rebellious, but what makes Ulysses radical is its dramatization of the unending conflict between good and evil.
James Longenbach
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Books and IdeasOctober 1, 2013
Demon and Craftsman: On D.H. Lawrence
The process of discovery, not their profundities as such, is what makes Lawrence’s poems so gripping.
James Longenbach
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BiographyJanuary 9, 2013
Irritable Reachings: On John Keats
A new biography of John Keats is no match for Keats’s poetic inventions.
James Longenbach
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CultureApril 11, 2012
Among the Tufted Canes: Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry
Geoffrey Brock’s anthology of twentieth-century Italian poetry offers the risk of a counter-eloquence.
James Longenbach
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CultureJanuary 25, 2012
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BiographyOctober 26, 2011
This Is Just to Say: On William Carlos Williams
A new biography shortchanges the poetic achievement of William Carlos Williams.
James Longenbach