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Are two epigraphs better than one?
John Updike attaches two epigraphs to Rabbit as Rich (1981), the third in his tetralogy of novels centering on Rabbit Angstrom. The reader can more easily grasp the pertinence of the first epigraph than…
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David Lehman as a Spy [poem by Lucas Smith]
(Ed note: I can't begin to count the number of times I've heard David introduced before a reading. These introductions are always respectful, sometimes celebratory, and often quite eloquent. The introduction below , written and…
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Endarkenment is the Mother of Beauty: on Michael Palmer’s “A Dream of Sound Inside the Mountain” [by Susan Lewis]
In his most recent book, Laughter of the Sphinx (New Directions, 2016) Michael Palmer gifts us with his characteristically spare and muscular lyricism, as rich and musical as it is bleak. In the meantime,…
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Next Line, Please: What Can Save Us?
That's right, everybody! Tuesday is here and so is another week in the life of Next Line, Please. Last week's prompt was inspired by the clever, punchy, and thoughtful poetry of Marianne Moore. This week's…
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Halloween Parade [song by Lou Reed]
I didn't fully appreciate the poignancy of this song until I moved to NYC and watched the parade: sdl
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Comment c’est (by Mitch Sisskind)
As feminine beauty such as that Of Annabella Sciorra, for instance, In the 1990s irrefutably testifies to Celestial virtue, does contrarywise Harvey Weinstein’s graying flesh Express nature’s malevolent side, So that Harvey…
