Scholarship noted: Love’s Architecture: Devotional Modes in Seventeenth-Century English Poetry by Anthony Low. New York University Press, 1978. I. A Lasting Model? Certain religious poets of 17th-century England, often called the “Metaphysical” poets, have gained as firm a place in the Western canon as any group of poets enjoys today. Tangibly speaking, that means that [...]

Reviewed: The Whole Nine Yards: Longer Poems by Daniel Hoffman. Louisiana State University Press, 2009. 96 pages. According to the author of The Whole Nine Yards (winner of the L. E. Phillabaum Poetry Award for 2009), the book: presents tales and suites exploring violence and transcendence, and comprises my third volume of selected poems, following Beyond Silence: [...]

Five Lessons from AWP: Or, Why We Hate Poetry Readings 1)      You should recite your poetry, not read it. 2)      If you can’t recite your poetry, then you can’t remember your poetry. And if you can’t remember your poetry, why would anyone else? 3)      A poetry recital should be a performance.  Most poets read their [...]

Reviewed: Shoulder Season by Ange Mlinko. Coffee House Press, 2010. 81 pages. If Shoulder Season were a town, it would be a deserted one. All evidence of life—buildings, boardwalks, beds and tables, monuments and blankets, pots of flowers, tools, cars and cribs—would be left intact, the people gone. The only sound would be a voice emanating [...]

(An Occasional Series: Part One)     Poems reviewed in this article:  “From a Window” by Christian Wiman, from the Atlantic (July/August 2008). Reprinted with permission of the author. “Gesundheit” by Robyn Sarah, from Maisonneuve (Summer 2008). “Gesundheit” is in Sarah’s forthcoming collection Pause for Breath (Biblioasis, 2009), and reprinted with permission of the publisher. “Infomercial [...]

Making the Angels Wince Reviewed:  The Making of a Matriot by Frances Payne Adler. Red Hen Press, 2003. 100 pages, $13.95. The Making of a Matriot is the sort of book that makes one embarrassed for poets in general, and Frances Payne Adler in particular. The author, who directs something called “the Creative Writing and Social [...]