Joseph Campana
What’s in a Name?
Cliches about the thefts of writers abound. It’s not that writers are plagiarists–though perhaps sometimes they are–but the truisms about writers knowing how to steal from other writers are near omnipresent. What about titles? According to a recent article in…
Endangered Species? Ursula K. Le Guin and the Fate of Reading
I grew up in the foothills of the Adirondacks, in a small working-class mill town from which, as a child, I feared I’d never leave. One such escape–though it was more than that–was reading. Going on to college and graduate…
Auden’s Art
I’ve never been a devotee of W.H. Auden–not because I don’t respect the poetry. Other voices have simply been nearer and dearer to my heart. Maybe, too, that ethereally magisterial (dare I say upper-class) demeanor makes me feel distanced from…
Changing of the Guard? Poetry at The New Yorker
After the Dana Goodyear-Poetry Foundation fracas stirred the pot at perhaps the most prestigious and complacent poetry venue in the United States (and perhaps the world), something, again, is blowing in the wind near the offices of The New Yorker.…
Deborah Digges and the Force of Elegy
I’ve been trying for a few years now to understand elegy. This is not to speak of not knowing what the definition of elegy is or not knowing where to find astonishing instances of elegiac writing. Rather, what’s the appeal…
