258. (John Dryden)

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

257. (T.S. Eliot)

Since the age of 16 or 17, when I discovered the criticism of T.S. Eliot for myself, I’ve met with … More

Among the reasons Thomson’s “The City of Dreadful Night” can be enjoyed is that it is a second-rate poem that … More

What is the appeal of criticism, of reading or doing it? It must rest in beguilement at judgment itself, and … More

When someone says that something possesses the quality of the literary, or refers to the literary or even artistic imagination, … More

The Poetry Foundation’s website has a brief essay on Montale, helpful mostly for its generous quotations from critics and … More

Among Eliot’s staunchest and nimblest readers, Christopher Ricks was unrelenting in his 1978 attack on Eliot’s late essay, “What … More

Showing, earlier this week, some poems I’d written to a critic I admire and trust, I received back some critical … More

Friday morning, stuck in Pound’s forty-seventh canto, a student (precocious, ambitious reader) broke me free from the jam(b) I was in: … More

Geoffrey Hill died last week, on June 30, at age 84. Nobody doubts that he wrote some of the greatest … More