259. (John Dryden)

It seems necessary that, if poetry is not to effect synthesis by way of the elaborate similes and coaxed metaphors … More

258. (John Dryden)

For John Dryden, the world tends towards fusion and confusion and it is for the poet to establish distinctions and … More

228. (John Donne)

Among the tissues of judgments that compose a poem will be a judgment about what a poem plays at doing … More

192. (Mary Sidney)

Renaissance translations of the Psalms are maybe the closest English poetry comes to what we encounter in the religious paintings … More

189. (William Shakespeare)

The experiences of time, from its swelling (the remove from the court in As You Like It) and contracting time (Richard II; … More

178. (John Dryden)

Since both are masters of the heroic couplet, both scathing satirists, how, it might be asked, does Dryden achieve effects … More

146. (John Milton)

Reading Paradise Lost with a student, the chance to see more than before, vicariously through fresh eyes, has been most thrillingly felt … More

137. (William Shakespeare)

The recent National Theatre production of Hamlet, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, opens in Hamlet’s bedroom, where the prince sits, playing old records … More

130. (Thomas Traherne)

I was introduced to Traherne by Keith Waldrop; Waldrop was teaching a seminar in Restoration Literature, in which, with lasting … More

65. (Thomas Carew)

Thomas Carew was a contributor to the flourishing of poetic elegance at the Caroline court in the years before the … More