1. Scattered with nebulous crockery we talk mothers their grief, their limpid yearning. Your father is to my father only quantitatively. His grandmother and her worried son frantic across the rutted old table. Our earnest faith constructs so much glaring, translucent joy. I do describe his shoestring body and lie when I wish his wife…
“Beginning with the fall of towers and ending with the emergence of a new voice, the mastery of Against Translation is clear…”
“Spectres linger in the poems of Ransom Street…”
Growing out of a Fall 2017 project initially submitted for Professor Richard Sacks’ “The English Sonnet” course at Columbia University, Emily Sun’s essay is an analysis of a critical edition of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Sonnet—To Science.” The edition was produced by Sun herself from a number of existing editions of the poem, and is contained…
I don’t remember when poetry came into my life…
John Ashbery won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and many other prizes. This poem was published by the Review over twenty years after he had earned his M.A. from Columbia. Happy Autumn Fields by John Ashbery I call it (though I’m no authority)The big syndrome, of when everythingLies down together. The pointed roofsThat called…
At Columbia University, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and other beat poets got to know each other. Many of them were published in the Review. from “Dakar Doldrums” by Allen Ginsberg IV Twenty days have drifted in the wakeOf this slow aged ship that carries coalFrom Texas to Dakar. I, for the sakeOf little but my causelessness of…
John Hollander was an eminent poet, scholar, and critic. He has written numerous poetry collections, the first of which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. He is also known for his 1981 book Rhyme’s Reason: A Guide to English Verse. Choruses by John Hollander I (The crumbling days and the hard cold nightsAre flickering,…
As a countdown to the release of the first issue of our 100th volume on December 14th, we will be posting pieces every day from previous issues over the years. Our first piece was written by Mary Morris, who went on to earn the Rome Prize in Literature and publish many novels, memoirs, and story collections. She…
Azure adj. blue, bright, cloudless; (of love) cloudless: The false azure of cloudless love. And when a noun – heaven, palate, the roof of one’s mouth. Azure as in: The bright, bottomless vowels that once echoed against the roof of your mouth. Or: Unstuck from your palate, here I am – trying to speak your…