American poetry
The sad fate of Edna St Vincent Millay – America’s once celebrated poet
In June 1957, Robert Lowell attended a poetry reading by E.E. Cummings. Sitting dutifully and deferentially alongside him were Allen…
Suicide was always a spectre for John Berryman
‘A matter that hurts me is that I have made many hundreds of people laugh, in various cities, during the…
Walt Whitman’s poetry can change your life
To describe a new book as ‘eagerly awaited’ is almost unpardonable. Yet Mark Doty’s What is the Grass: Walt Whitman…
Love, Robert Lowell and poetic licence
The conceit of this book — the author’s third on Robert Lowell — is strong, although its execution is less…
The mad, mum-fixated maiden aunt of modernism
Marianne Moore’s poems are notoriously ‘difficult’ but her personality and the circumstances of her life are as fascinating today as…
