Archive
The complete Open Letters Monthly Archive.
Pound wrote The Pisan Cantos on toilet paper while prisoner in an open-air metal cage during WWII, and he spent many of the following years in mental hospitals. "I can get along with crazy people," he quipped. "It's only the fools I can't stand."
Read MoreThere are warring schools of fad and interpretation, there are critical readings of an hour or a season - and then there's Wordsworth's verse itself, annotating and amplifying the personal reading experience.
Read MoreWilliam Shakespeare meets Halo 2 in Colby Somerville's new chapbook Death TV (1-6): the drone of bees in ancient glades and the drone of Lockheed Martin. What's the poet onto?
Read MoreMatvei Yankelevich's poetry may seem direct and plainspoken, but as a new collection shows, his verse reveals a long battle with the uncertainty of language.
Read MoreThe great Antonio Machado loved his native Spain and was disgusted by its descent into fascism; that fusion of enchantment and grief vivifies his unforgettable poetry.
Read MoreIn Soviet Russia, Joseph Brodsky was persecuted by the authorities, but memorized by ordinary people. In the capitalist West, he was feted by the authorities, but ignored by ordinary people. Perhaps it's just as well he thought reality "nonsense or a nuisance."
Read MoreThe verses of the neglected poet James Schuyler seem to ramble, but they don't really ramble; they seem dishevelled, but they aren't; they seem miniaturist, but they contain whole worlds. Stephen Akey makes the case for your renewed attention.
Read More2012, a William Gaddis renaissance year, sees the reissue of the author's awesome, strangely prescient 1975 novel J R. Greg Gerke and Gabriel Blackwell discuss their experiences tackling the tome.
Read MoreNerdy teenager Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider - and a super-franchise was born! As a new blockbuster Spider-Man movie hits the summer theaters, Justin Hickey takes us on a tour of the character's colorful - and often tortured - past!
Read MoreThe inventor of the beloved Inspector Maigret was gigantically prolific - hundreds of novels, churned out at lightning speed (80 pages a day, according to the author himself) - and in this as in many other things, Georges Simenon was a world unto himself.
Read MoreJohn Updike once affably damned James Agee as a wasted talent who failed to cultivate his craft. Liza Birnbaum replies with a defense of the glories of Agee's ragged, heartfelt work.
Read MoreDubbed the Voltaire of science fiction, Robert Sheckley often denied that there was anything serious in his fabulations. But a new collection belies the claim, displaying inventive satire mixed with wisdom
Read MoreThis picaresque classic by Colombian novelist Álvaro Mutis doubles as an extended valentine to the author of Heart of Darkness. Robert Latona revisits it.
Read MoreDerek Walcott's long Homeric tribute "Omeros" will likely stand as his masterpiece and reward detailed study for centuries. And as with Homer, even small fragments of the world can yield fascinating insights.
Read MoreBrian Evenson's work is a violent exploration of a violent medium: language. His new novel Immobility and the stories collected in Windeye continue that journey into dark territory.
Read MoreArt, Truth, Data, Sex, and Facebook--rabble-roused by John D'Agata and Jim Fingal's The Lifespan of a Fact, Max Ross connects them in a key to all nonfiction aesthetics
Read MoreNo form of literature seems as thoroughly doomed in the 21st century as the printed encyclopedia, but even dinosaurs can have rich and rewarding life-stories. Where did we go, before we all went to the Internet?
Read MoreKen Layne's political writing is sharp and raucus, and a novel about a financially devastated near-future United States would seem like a perfect vehicle for more anger. But though that fire is still there, a gentle-but-compelling spiritualist tone has risen to to the fore.
Read MoreKnown as much for how she exited her life as for the poetry she wrote during it, Sylvia Plath remains a polarizing figure in the world of verse. What are we reading, when we subject ourselves to her poems?
Read MoreA thumping mix-tape of dystopian fantasy and gangster noir, Kevin Barry's City of Bohane defies easy categorization--but does it offer a story to match its stylistic bravura?
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