The Traditions That Gave Us Homer

The Traditions That Gave Us Homer

Hearing Homer’s Song: The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry By Robert Kanigel. Knopf, 2021. Hardcover, 336 pages, $28.95. Reviewed by J. L. Wall. It can be difficult to escape the image of Homer as blind bard and near-inventor of human literature. Just glance at...
All That’s Left is This Foundation Stone

All That’s Left is This Foundation Stone

The Commonwealth: Poems By Dan Rattelle. Little Gidding Press, 2022. Paperback, 34 pages, $9.99. Reviewed by Joshua Hren. Wordsworth’s complaint in the Lyrical Ballads Preface (1800) might well have been written last Tuesday at 2:00 a.m. (lost already among too many...
In Moods Both Wild and Quiet

In Moods Both Wild and Quiet

Strange Gods of the Prairie edited by Jason Ryberg and John Dorsey. Spartan Press, 2021. Paperback, 250 pages, $15. Reviewed by Christopher Landrum Strange Gods of the Prairie is an anthology by the Gasconade Review of Bell, Missouri, comprising 150 poetic works...
Robert Lowell’s Selfish Determination

Robert Lowell’s Selfish Determination

The Dolphin (Two Versions, 1972–1973) by Robert Lowell, edited by Saskia Hamilton. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019, Paperback, ix + 195 pages, $18. The Dolphin Letters, 1970–1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle edited by Saskia Hamilton. Farrar,...