Celebrated Minor Contemporary American Poetry

by | Dec 28, 2011

The Best American Poetry 2011 Edited by Kevin Young with David Lehman Scribner (New York, NY), 2011, xxvi + 211 pp., $35.00 Consider the following—“Rally”—the first poem in this year’s annual Best American Poetry series, reproduced in its entirety: The awesome weight...

‘The Greatest Fool That Ever Lived’

by | Dec 28, 2011

On Essays and Letters“It is easier to believe that one’s self is a fool than that Socrates was a fool; and yet, if he was not right, he must have been the greatest fool that ever lived.” —Robert Lynd, “On Not Being a Philosopher.” In book six of the Republic, the...

Lukacs and Kennan: Reflections on a Friendship

by | Dec 22, 2011

A Lukacs SymposiumThere are relationships, Michael Oakeshott once wrote, “in which no result is sought and which are engaged in for their own sake and enjoyed for what they are and not for what they provide. This is so of friendship.” John Lukacs could not have known,...

The Awful Responsibility of Time

by | Dec 21, 2011

John Lukacs and the Problem of American History A Lukacs SymposiumSoon now we shall go out of the house and go into the convulsion of the world, out of history into history and the awful responsibility of Time. Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men (1946) Throughout...

John Lukacs as Teacher

by | Dec 20, 2011

A Lukacs Symposium John P. Rossi For years the Reader’s Digest had a feature entitled “The Most Unforgettable Character I Ever Met.” For me that was John Lukacs and the meeting took place in 1955 during my sophomore year at La Salle College. As a freshman I had heard...