W.H. Auden
Stephen Spender's Jewish Roots
Though he was only one-quarter Jewish, poet Stephen Spender’s affinity for Jewish culture is affirmed in his newly published journals.
Art-Collecting Memoirs of Isaiah Berlin's Stepson
The poet W. H. Auden once remarked that hearing gourmets describe favorite meals made him wish he could live on pills, and reading the memoirs of some art collectors describing their acquisitions can make one want to live sans art. An exception to this trend is the art connoisseur Michel Strauss, born in France in 1936 to Jewish parents, and former Head of the Impressionist and Modern Art Department at Sotheby’s auction house, London.
April, the Poetry Month: Some Highlights
“April,” famously wrote T.S. Eliot in “The Waste Land,” “is the cruellest month.” Despite this underwhelming endorsement, the Academy of American Poets inaugurated April as the National Poetry Month back in 1996 and, every year since, has hyped up a surge of readings, publications and all other things poetry-related.