Dickinson’s Facsicle 16: A Book Review by Steven Cramer
Steven Cramer both enlightens and entertains in his essay, “Dickinson’s Fascicle 16: A Book Review.” In his ambitious undertaking of exegeting Dickinson’s 16th “book,” he writes with a playful erudition that one could easily imagine amusing and even informing Dickinson herself. Acknowledging the futility of trying to divine the “authorial intentions” regarding Dickinson’s fascicles that were last seen intact by
Reading the Qur’an with Rumi by Amer Latif
Amer Latif, a native of Islamabad, Pakistan and current professor of comparative religions and Islamic Studies at Emerson College who taught also at Marlboro College for many years, wrote his dissertation on Rumi at New York University at Stony Brook. I asked him to write the following essay, which he has titled “Reading the Qur’an With Rumi”. In succinct, lucid
All These Red and Yellow Things: Short Papers on Art by Lesle Lewis
In her ekphrastic essay, “All These Red and Yellow Things, Short Papers on Art,” Lesle Lewis writes with a refreshingly observant eye and ear about some of her favorite works of art, reminding her readers of his or her inherent acumen for discovering exhilarating appreciation for paintings and song. A celebrated prose poet, Lesle widens her vision and aural perception for
“Truscon, A Division of Republic Steel, 1969-70: A Prose-Poem Sequence Disguised as a Lyrical Essay, Itself Aspiring to Be a Fictional Memoir” by Peter Johnson
Peter Johnson’s essay, “Truscon, A Division of Republic Steel, 1969-70: A Prose Poem Sequence Disguised as a Lyrical Essay, Itself Aspiring to Be a Memoir,” reads like a series of prose poems that cohere seamlessly as a moving and occasionally brutal coming of age story about the author’s first job experience in a steel factory in his hometown of Buffalo,
Some Thoughts on the Sublime Irony of Nothing and the Divine Imagination by Chard DeNiord
SOME THOUGHTS ON THE SUBLIME IRONY OF NOTHING AND THE DIVINE IMAGINATION “The most sublime act is to set another before you.” William Blake “Nothing is the force/ That renovates the World.” Emily Dickinson * The legacy of sublime conceits in both secular and religious literature betrays the same ironic muse in an archetypal arc
The Only Critic by J.T. Barbarese
J.T. Barbarese makes the trenchant claim in his essay “The Only Critic” that memory itself serves as the “only critic” of poetry by virtue of its acumen for retaining what W.H. Auden called “memorable speech.” “Memory is what we remember…not a storage facility,” he writes. “It is a hoarder, so it isn’t choosey or tidy.” One must, therefore, work at
