Anecdotal Evidence

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 ...

Over the weekend I read a book review full of enthusiastic approval that was so poorly written, anything the critic had to say was immediate...

It’s a commonplace to say you can read a serious reader’s autobiography on his bookshelves. For some of us you can say the same of the libra...

The most casually intelligent person I have ever known was D.G. Myers , who died on this date, September 26, in 2014. I prize intelligence b...

“My first novel, Bright Center of Heaven , is a compendium of all the writers I loved and admired. In a symposium at Smith College, Saul Bel...