I’ve held off reading the last few poems in Jack Gilbert’s latest (The Dance Most of All) for months. Literally. Gilbert is one of those rare touchstone authors I was just ruminating about...

“I was never so rapid in my virtue but that my vice kept up with me. We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke strops our vice.” –Henry David Thoreau

I’m glad Jared has taken Michael Johnson’s poem in an interesting direction… it was a poem I dismissed too quickly. First, the poem itself: "How to Be Eaten by a Lion" If you hear the rush, the swish of mottled sand and dust kicked up under...

I meant to post this a long time ago: courtesy of The Bava, you can listen to a recording of Flannery O’Connor reading one of her (our) greatest short stories: “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Look for the audio links at the bottom of the post. The...

In Memoir: A History, Ben Yagoda uses (coins?) the inspired term "shtick-lit" to describe "books perpetrated by people who undertook an unusual project with the express purpose of writing about it." I wish I’d thought of that. It’s a great way to...

As is so often the case with anthologies like Best American Poetry, I’m finding a significant number of poems that diminish each time I re-read them. Fortunately, other poems grow on me. I’m on track, as I expected before ever opened it, to settle...