Anecdotal Evidence

I think of Edwin Arlington Robinson as an autumnal poet, just as certain others are vernal. Even when the ostensible subject is elsewhere, t...

The finest tribute to one writer by another I’ve read of late is John Lukacs’ “Agnes Repplier, Writer and Essayist.” Repplier (1855-1950) pu...

A reader asks why I so often write about poetry but am not a poet myself. “Have you ever written poems?” he asks. “Do you write them secretl...

I knew a computer science professor who now works, I think, for Google. He was an interesting fellow who defied many CS stereotypes. He read...

The title poem in Anthony Hecht’s 1979 collection The Venetian Vespers is a dramatic monologue spoken by an aging American expatriate livin...

“If you don’t know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do.” The most ebullient and unpretentio...

Two poets seldom linked came together in the New York Times on September 8, 1912. The writer was Joyce Kilmer, known forever as the author ...