Taking the Road Less Traveled

Taking the Road Less Traveled

Painting Over the Growth Chart  By Dan Rattelle. Wiseblood Books, 2024. Paperback, 63 pages, $15. Reviewed by A.M. Juster.  The spirit of Robert Frost surely does not look kindly on claims that some new poet walks in his footsteps, particularly one with a fancy-pants...

Waltharius and the Epic Quest for Epic Poetry

Waltharius edited and translated by Abram Ring. Peeters, 2016. Paperback, 198 pages, $63. A. M. JUSTER Western literature begins with greatness on a grand scale. Homer’s magnificent epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, created the framework and the impetus for...

The Epistolary Petrarch

Selected Letters: Volumes I & II by Francesco Petrarca, translated and edited by Elaine Fantham. Harvard University Press, 2017. Hardcover, 800 + 816 pages, $30 + $30.Contemporary readers of poetry tend to underestimate the power and influence of the Canzoniere of...

Airing Rome’s Dirty Laundry

Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet by Daisy Dunn. Harper, 2016. Hardcover, 336 pages, $26.In the United States we cede too much control of the humanities to professors who wall off their subject matters from the public with the rhetoric of...
Epic, Rock, Camp, and Beowulf

Epic, Rock, Camp, and Beowulf

Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage by Jason Craig and Dave Malloy. Trinity Repertory Company, Providence, RI. Run: September 8–October 9, 2016. America lacks a national epic that helps to define our national identity. In English we inherited from the British two...