Writing Out of Time: J.M.G. Le Clézio
J.M.G. Le Clézio is an adherent of extreme environments. The author spent about one-third of his Nobel speech fondly recounting his travels through the Darién Gap, the mostly lawless and…
The Budding Bucolic D.A. Powell
In the course of just three collections — Tea, Lunch, and Cocktails — D.A. Powell has proven himself to be one of the most exciting and enjoyable American poets writing today. His work is…
Kid-Gloved: New & Selected Poems by Andrew Motion
Andrew Motion has now been an acclaimed poet for more than thirty years—he won Oxford University’s Newdigate prize while an undergraduate in 1975—and has been Britain’s poet laureate for the…
Geoffrey Hill: Unparalleled Atonement
I. The recently published edition of Geoffrey Hill’s Selected Poems appears to be an attempt by Yale University Press to atone for Hill’s unpardonable lapse from print on these shores, and I…
Welcome to The Critical Flame
The Irish poet W.B. Yeats, in one of his more revolutionary moods, is purported to have exclaimed, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a…
Less “Je ne sais quoi,” More “Je ne sais pas pourquoi”
“She moved over the surface of life the way figure skaters move. . . she never broke through the ice, she never pierced the surface and descended into those awful…