Books
What happens when you cross the perfervid emotionalism of Edna St. Vincent Millay, she of the candle burning at both ends, with Charles Olson’s idea, distilled out of William Carlos Williams, of a projective verse imbued with “the breathing of the man who writes” (and I suppose it is very emphatical
Books
It’s so hard to read a friend’s book without prejudice.
Books
We think the canon of American art of the 1940s and ‘50s is set in stone, but we’ve got a lot of looking still to do.
Books
Cards on the table: I prefer short poems to long ones, slender bodies of work to massive ones. So naturally, I consider the best way to read poetry is not in a book, but in a chapbook.
Books
Some thought the Arab Spring could not have happened without social media. But the necessity makes the means and not vice versa. May ’68 didn’t need Facebook. They had transistor radios.
Books
No one writes letters anymore, but I still like reading them — especially when both sides of a correspondence are collected between two covers. No narrative, no argument — just the mercurial yet implicit unity of a relationship. Still, I’m not sure why I picked up this book.
Books
When I left off last week I was halfway through this quartet of low-life-in-the-midst-of-high-life novels, dissatisfied with the series’ prelude, Never Mind, but encouraged by the relative superiority of book two, Bad News.
Books
To begin reading a contemporary novel isn’t easy, if you’re not in the habit.
Books
I keep wondering whether it’s really possible to write at length and in depth about this kind of music.
Books
On its last day of existence — or, more particularly, on a day after its last day, when it reopened just for this purpose — the St. Mark’s Bookshop sold off all of its remaining stock at $2 a copy.
Books
Debt is the crux where economics and morality intersect.
Books
Last summer I found this copy of a book I’d long been curious about on the “discard” shelves of the East Hampton Library.