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

Browse

Criticism

Writing in Pictures

Richard Scarry and the art of children’s literature
September 9, 2024

The Living Practice of Criticism

A reply to my respondents
June 17, 2024

The Real World of Reading

A response to Jonathan Kramnick’s Criticism and Truth
June 17, 2024

The Rhapsodic Critic

A response to Jonathan Kramnick’s Criticism and Truth
June 17, 2024

Writing for the Reader

A response to Jonathan Kramnick’s Criticism and Truth
June 17, 2024

When the Movies Mattered

Siskel and Ebert and the heyday of popular movie criticism
June 12, 2024

Alice Notley’s Disobedience

The shape-shifting voice that changed American poetry
June 10, 2024

Poetically Speaking

A new book makes the case for bewilderment as a critical virtue
June 10, 2024

Stealing the Show

Why conservatives killed America’s federally funded theater
June 10, 2024
Books

The Polycrisis

Why can’t we stop talking about nonmonogamy?
April 24, 2024