Homesick for Eternity
Incurable: The Haunted Writings of Lionel Johnson, the Decadent Era’s Dark Angel by Lionel Johnson, edited by Nina Antonia. Strange Attractor Press, 2019. Paperback, 216 pages, $20. Reviewed by Scott Beauchamp The German-Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes in The...
Letting Writers Do the Talking
Writers on Writing: Conversations with Allen Mendenhall edited by Allen Mendenhall. Red Dirt Press, 2019. Paperback, 230 pages. $16.95. Reviewed by Elizabeth Bittner Writers on Writing is a superb collection of interviews conducted by Allen Mendenhall with established...
‘All of time is cut in two’
And After All by Rhina P. Espaillat. Able Muse Press, 2019. Paperback, 130 pages, $20. Reviewed by Midge Goldberg “Without you,” Rhina Espaillat says, “all of time is cut in two.” The best poems in Espaillat’s new book, And After All, are about grief. Espaillat lost...
The Function of Criticism in a Time of Entropy
American Audacity: In Defense of Literary Daring By William Giraldi. Liveright, 2018. Hardcover, 462 pages, $30. Reviewed by Oliver Spivey William Giraldi, author of the critical prose collected in American Audacity: In Defense of Literary Daring, is that rarest of...
Decades ago, Robert Nisbet anticipated many of today’s concerns about loneliness, bureaucracy, and declining community. Luke C. Sheahan (@lsheahan) revisits the ideas behind those warnings and their relevance today.
Questions about first principles have become fashionable again. @HorcherF and @DanJTPitt apply generosity to smooth contention between intellectuals and politicians, they embrace the tension between theory and practice, and they highlight the power of particularity as a source of