In my last post on Stevie Smith, I suggested that the poet writes from a perspective of innocence, translating into…
364. (Stevie Smith)
It might be tempting to think Stevie Smith is putting on an act; with such a thought, we might be…
363. (Robert Duncan)
A Poem of Despondencies . We go whatever route to run un- obstructed. A city without seasons may bug…
362. (T.S. Eliot)
The problem of criticism—and the study of criticism—is what to say about, how to reflect on and make sense of,…
361. (Geoffrey Hill)
Poem 154 of The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin: . Cinquefoil apple-flowers touch down in grass; early roses…
360. (William Shakespeare)
In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, the good great houses of Orsino and Olivia insist upon decorum and the traditions of civilization;…
359. (John Donne)
If I were asked to give a complete account of what it means to dwell, I could do little more…
358. (William Empson)
Among those brilliant readers and critics, Johnson, Coleridge, Eliot, and Empson, the primary engine of productivity, whether in marginalia, publications,…
357. (T.S. Eliot)
Approached from the direction of monumentality, The Waste Land calls for the literary historian: the poem is a post-Romantic attempt…
356. (Charles Baudelaire)
Here is the first stanza of “Obsession,” from Aaron Poochigian’s wonderful new translation of Baudelaire: Vast woods, you scare me…
Critical Provisions 