Criticism

Is the Twenty-First Century a Creative Void?

Critics mourn a bygone cultural era. But nostalgia for the new isn't new.
Louise Lawler’s yellowy dye-destruction print of Warhol’s “Round Marilyn”

Searching for Seamus Heaney

What I found when I resolved to read him

James Schuyler’s Genius

Why our greatest poet of the everyday has become a poet of the moment

The Elusive Poet of Desire

Why biographers can’t pin Cavafy down

Reading the Declaration of Independence as Holy Text

How the American creed emerged—and evolved—over 250 years

Terrence Malick’s Disciples

Why the auteur is the most influential director in Hollywood

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Criticism

State and Vine

On Thomas Pynchon's Vineland
July 1, 1991

"The Waste Land" Revisited

December 1, 1990

Ash-Wednesday

December 1, 1989

Retrospect: Poetry in Review

December 1, 1985

Revisionists Revised

October 1, 1984

Mallarmé and Bataille

October 1, 1982