Whenever I get a chance to talk to young readers about books, I come away marveling: Kids are interested in so many things , and they’re interested in those things all at once ! Do they want to read an illustrated book about bugs? Yes! Do they want to read a novel about monsters from […]
In Lieu of Solutions by Violet Spurlock READING AT the Poetry Project in Manhattan this past October, Violet Spurlock spoke on the relative urgency of caring about a poem: it’s poetry, so the stakes are low; but it’s poetry, so the stakes are everything. For Spurlock’s first full-length collection, In Lieu of Solutions (2023), the […]
“The Afterword” is born from scribbles buried between cracked book spines, from the creased corner of a well-thumbed novel. Through this coming-of-age column, I hope to use the literary bildungsroman to make sense of my real-life experience of growing up — and to write the afterword on the texts I most treasure. My first memories […]
John William Waterhouse, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons . When I read Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies , a novel about an interpreter at the International Court of Justice, I found myself underlining every page. Perhaps the identity crisis of the narrator—“I was repulsed, to find myself so permeable”—had transferred to me. Or perhaps the clarity of […]
You’ve probably heard by now that last night, during the Grammys ceremony, as she was accepting an award, Taylor Swift announced that she has a new album coming out. Many thought that if she were revealing anything, it would be the release date of her re-recording of her Reputation album. Instead, she announced an album […]
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Colossus’ is a transitional Sylvia Plath poem. The title poem of the only poetry collection published during her lifetime ( The Colossus , in 1960), it is one of the most accomplished poems in that collection, and in some ways paves the way for the mature poems, written […]
Most of us who enjoy books are largely agreed upon concepts like “good writing” and “clarity and confidence of expression” being fundamental to our delight in the play of words upon a page. We are brought up to learn that conveying our thoughts in “good English” is part of our education in that language, and […]
“A Saint Reading,” circa 1470Credit…Bartolomeo Vivarini Hold your breath/Make a wish/Count to three/Come with me and you’ll be/In a world of pure imagination. Instead of touring a surreal chocolate manufacturer today, we’re wishing ourselves to someplace much realer and saltier, which is … Italy! I was fortunate enough to travel to lovely Parma last month […]
Almaje//Getty Images A picture may be worth a thousand words, but in a day and age where pictures are plentiful and the written word a lost art, a handwritten letter is worth a thousand pictures. Take that handwritten letter a step further and make it a love letter, and you’ve got yourself a priceless memento […]
‘Wild nights – Wild nights!’ The energy and exultation with which Emily Dickinson opens this, one of her most passionately felt poems, encourages us to share the excitement and passion, or at least dares us to try to resist it. Although this is not perhaps the opening line of Emily Dickinson’s that most readily springs […]
