Anecdotal Evidence

Long ago, during a telephone conversation with the late poet and dear friend Helen Pinkerton, I asked about her friendship with another poet...

A former colleague at the university asked if I would proof a paper he had written before he sent it to an academic journal. That’s part of ...

  Dana Gioia has written, produced and posted a much-needed video about the curious life and work of the American poet Weldon Kees. Wait for...

In his Notebooks, 1922-86 , Michael Oakeshott titles an entry from March 1955 “The True Believer”:   “Before he became a member of the Par...

Almost the only thing I ever write down so I don’t forget it is the grocery list. Sporadically I kept a diary when younger but each time the...

Berating people seldom works. Mostly it keeps the berater amused. Few of us revise our thinking or behavior because someone tells us we shou...

The superb American poet X.J. Kennedy died this morning at age ninety-six. Dana Gioia writes in an email: “I don’t have to tell any of you...

Architrave entered English in Shakespeare’s day by way of Latin and Italian. It describes the bottom portion of an entablature, the horizon...

O ur dog has gotten too old to catch opossums. In his prime he could charge across the backyard, leap and grab the marsupial crawling along ...