Anecdotal Evidence

“I am a nostalgist. More susceptible to the pull of the past than many of those around me, I am also aware of my condition, even somewhat as...

Certain writers lay claim to a piece of geography. Think of Cavafy’s Alexandria and William Kennedy’s Albany . Outsiders may visit but the d...

Several readers have quibbled with the late Oscar Mandel’s assertion that “literature exists to make men happy.” Oscar celebrates the “pleas...

“Poetry gives us a way of reading the world. Through its cadences, through its different ways of simultaneously conveying reason and feeling...

R.L. Barth has been translating Martial’s epigrams for more than forty years. I think I first encountered his versions in the anthology Epig...

“It is best to open with a simple declaration. I belong to a quaint depleted sect of serious readers who believe that literature exists to m...

Sometimes I suspect I’m a country man marooned in the city, though I grew up in the suburbs. Years ago I read an anthropologist who theorize...