Why Was Alan Gross Anyone's Guest of Honor?
Alan Gross knew he was breaking the law and endangered the lives of Cubans and Americans alike. John Stoehr asks why anyone would honor him.
Life and Afterlife of William Carlos Williams
Something Urgent I Have to Say to You: The Life and Works of William Carlos Williams
By Herbert Leibowitz
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 528 pages, $40.00
Drawn to The Beat of a Generation
When Samuel Johnson was asked to join a venture to reprint English poets from Chaucer to the present, most of them major and some minor, it was at first a commercial effort. The London publishers hoped that Johnson’s “The Lives of the Poets,” appearing in collected form for the first time in 1781, would secure their market share by driving out a similar work from Edinburgh.
And Then There Was “And”
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, saith poet Michael Blumenthal. Well, in fact, he nearly saith that. Not quite, but almost.