Essays
“They Tell Me Nothing’s Gone”: On Robert Lowell, Life Studies, and Recovery
By the time Robert Lowell started writing most of the poems in Life Studies, he had been hospitalized five times, mostly for acute mania, and all since the completion of…
Virginia Woolf for FCC Chair!
Woolf’s critique of media concentration, slyly embedded in Three Guineas (1938) is highly relevant today.
For Rachel Carson, Wonder Was a Radical State of Mind
For Carson, bearing witness to nature, and responding with joy, excitement and delight, fostered a sense of humility.
A Graceful Way of Breathing: Remembering Anselm Hollo
Kindness, gentleness, delicacy, and a certain modest perspicacity defined Anselm’s approach to others—and to the world at large.
Love is a Narrative That Gets Written in Tandem
Imagine two couples, each at home for dinner. The first couple spends the whole meal caressing each other’s hair, calling each other cheesy monikers and, after the meal is finished,…
A Mind of Winter: Notes on Exile
To be estranged from our countries is to be estranged from some version of our selves.
Burton Raffel: Transformation Artist
His scholarship and energy were matched only by his insatiable ambition to tackle—and transform—the definitive texts of the Western canon.
Metamorphosis of a Dream
Sharif Ahmedov is the only translator of the great Jorge Luis Borges into Uzbek.
