"Strauss described himself as a skeptic for whom all alleged answers to philosophical problems were fundamentally contestable. From this perspective, Jaffa and Lampert are rival dogmatists. If Jaffa’s Strauss often sounds like a political zealot who … [Read more]
David Orr on “The Virtues of Poetry” by James Longenbach
"The audience for poetry is like a vastly reduced version of the audience for college football — superstitious, gossipy and divided into factions no less fervent for having only an occasional idea of what’s going on outside their own campuses. It’s a … [Read more]
Benoit Denizet-Lewis on “To the End of June” by Cris Beam
". . . the most important philosophical divide in the world of foster care is between those who believe that “kids are better off with their parents and the state’s job is to provide and regulate security,” and those who think that “kids are better … [Read more]
Nathan Heller on “Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock” by Matthew Quick
"Teenage gunmen may once have seemed a chilling aberration, but have become, hauntingly, as much a part of the American risk landscape as joy riding and misadventure at prom. Books like Quick’s are necessary, if only because novels, at their best, do … [Read more]
The Gifted Hammer: Poet as Simple Carpenter
A Review of Aimless Love by Billy Collins Billy Collins’ pen is a hammer that has been at work building a room for his poems in some pantheon or other. Sometimes that hammer has just the right surface for the nail it wants to hit. Other times, the … [Read more]
Robin Romm on “The Faraway Nearby” by Rebecca Solnit
"Shape as a preoccupation makes sense in a book about storytelling. Shapes and lines create order out of chaos, or at least highlight possible orderly paths through it. Solnit’s personal “story of sorts” brings together episodes from a difficult year … [Read more]
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