It is not known how “A Visit from St. Nicholas” came to be published in The Troy Sentinel in...
Ben Sears
Ben Sears is a writer and restaurant guy in Birmingham, Alabama. He lives quite happily across from a creek with his wife, two sons, and an obligatory dog. You can follow him on Twitter and read his blog, Might Stain Your Shirt.
John Clare’s reputation rises and falls. There are claimed instances of a revival, but dispersed over the...
I’m reminded of the first principle of Imagism: “Direct treatment of the ‘thing’, whether subjective or objective.”...
I’m not immune from the sort of self-flattery that arises when someone whose writing I respect enforces...
The trick to a good reading of most poetry seems to be in courting but not abusing...
The nose wiping comment has me thinking that Roman colloquialisms are beyond my ken, so I’m not...
Muriel Spark runs right up to the edge of crossing formal sensibilities with little near heresies, but...
They are as youthful as cool spring grass. They also have the defects of youth—youth’s impatience, unsophistication...
If you correctly type “semillon” the first result is the Wikipedia page for Tolkien’s Silmarillion. Good for...
That’s it. I just wanted to say “I don’t like change” so it had a double meaning....
Winthrop Mackworth Praed, a respected wit and politician who died young, tuberculosis at thirty-six. There’s still a...
I like Tillinghast’s phrase: “major minor poet.” Ransom’s precise word choice and easy formalism are things of...
I’ve had a great deal of trouble since reading that line considering anything she wrote to be...
Wordsworth wrote that Hogg “was undoubtedly a man of original genius, but of coarse manners and low...
It’s not a comfortable position for me because it’s rare to be right in opposition to learned...
Lines Written a Few Feet Away from My Television As and After I Flipped Through College Football...
When Anthony Hecht's unit liberated Flossenbürg concentration camp, he was ordered to collect stories and information. It...
There was a time when the falconer was the height of killing technology. We had projectiles, but...
AE Housman ennui appealed to a generation fighting for a world as they grew disillusioned with it.
“Rendezvous” was published posthumously, probably written in 1916, months before his death at the Battle of the...
