Posts by: Ailbhe Darcy

The authority to say anything at all

Nov, 2017 | by

When I was a Catholic teenager, I was an altar server and reader at my parish church. Our parish priest was forward-thinking. At one Easter Vigil Mass, I played the…

Or, How I Learned to Keep Worrying: Collaborative Writing, Motherhood, and the Atom Bomb

May, 2017 | by

In Inger Christensen’s long poem Alphabet, first published in Danish in 1981, the poet cooks potatoes. And atom bombs exist. While she stands in the kitchen peeling potatoes under the…

Knows It Knows Too Much: Jennifer L. Knox, Elliptical Compromises, and the Resolution of Humor

Jan, 2016 | by

As long ago as 1998, Stephen Burt noticed a tendency for contemporary poets to want to have their cake and eat it too, to speak from the heart while gesticulating…

Last Rhapsody at Marienbad

Jan, 2011 | by

Ben Mazer, now in his forties, looks like a terribly serious man in his photographs. He wants us to take his poetry seriously too. He publishes rarely and gravely: the…