Essays

Laying It On the Line for Turner Cassity (1929-2009)

The Near Is Crossed with Distance: A Note on the Verse of E. J. Scovell

1.

Philip Larkin and Literary Americans

Remembering Turner Cassity

How long is life?

Liu Shahe, Shi Tianhe and the Stars Poetry Disaster

i

To be misunderstood by one person is troublesome.
To be misunderstood by many is tragedy.

Persisting in Madness¹

Alan was still writing songs in the 1970’s, while I turned out historical narratives in iambic pentameter. We were much influenced by the Greek Alexandrian poet Konstantin Kavafy, and his sexual candor. We also admired A.L. Rowse’s exposé of Homosexuals in History and  Mary Renault’s historical novels. Such reading inspired this poem, which was my first sonnet.

Are Poems Still Allowed to Rhyme?

A contributor to a literary magazine enquires, ‘Are poems still allowed to rhyme?’

Caught and Freed: Manipulations of Form in Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sonnet” and “One Art”

Causley’s Wild Faith

Essay —

Wallace Stevens:

The Emperor of the Enigmatic

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The poet Mark Strand has said that Wallace Stevens is “one of the most admired American poets of the twentieth century,” but at the same time, one of “the least understood.” Perhaps that is because Wallace Stevens wrote some of the most willfully obscure poems of the twentieth century.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream