Reviews/Essays
2024
“Purposefully Prosaic: Kampa’s Most Recent Collection,” Literary Matters, Winter 2024 (16.2), review of Stephen Kampa’s World Too Loud to Hear
2023
“A Will to Believe,” Essays in Criticism, April 2023. Review of Lee Oser's Christian Humanism in Shakespeare: A Study of Religion and Literature
2022
“Lyrics in Search of an Allegory: On Three Recent Books from Rachel Hadas,” Los Angeles Review of Books, 25 November 2022, review of Pandemic Almanac, Piece by Piece: Selected Prose, and Love and Dread
“Of Dharma and Doom,” The American Scholar web essay, 5 September 2022, review of After the War: The Last Books of the Mahabharata, translated by Wendy Doniger
2021
“Point Blank: The Transparent Pleasures of Kirsch's Memoir in Verse,” Literary Matters, Fall 2022 (15:1), review of The Discarded Life by Adam Kirsch
“Overripeness is All: On Dralyuk's Poetic Premiere,” Literary Matters, Spring/Summer 2022 (14:3), review of Boris Dralyuk's My Hollywood and Other Poems
“Unscrupulously Epic,” The New Criterion, December 2021, review of Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Fiona Sampson
“Flight Among the Tombs: Anthony Hecht as Critical Essayist,” Literary Matters, Spring/Summer 2021 (13:3)
“Our Man in the Stacks,” Los Angeles Review of Books, 13 January 2021, review of Richard Greene, The Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Greene
Review of Nicholas A. Basbanes, Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Essays in Criticism, January 2021
2020
“Keeping It Real,” Los Angeles Review of Books, 27 October 2020, review of Martin Amis, Inside Story
“The Plainspoken Muse,” Los Angeles Review of Books, 30 September 2020, review of A.M. Juster, Wonder & Wrath, and Henry Sloss, Here & Then
“On Borrowed Wings,” Literary Matters, Fall 2020 (13:1), review of Joseph Harrison, Sometimes I Dream That I Am Not Walt Whitman,
“All Present and Accounted For,” Los Angeles Review of Books, 10 March 2020, Review of The Shrine Whose Shape I Am: The Collected Poetry of Samuel Menashe.
“Clive alive,” The New Criterion blog (Dispatch), 24 January 2020, Essay in appreciation of Clive James and his Somewhere Becoming Rain: Collected Writings of Philip Larkin.
2019
“The borders of the possible,” The New Criterion, September 2019, Review of Ursula Buchan, Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan.
The Hopkins Review, Summer 2019, Review of Gregory Orr, A Primer for Poets & Readers of Poetry; and James Longenbach, How Poems Get Made.
“‘Don’t Read Poetry’ is a literary manual for the Instagram era,” Washington Post, 30 May 2019, Review of Stephanie Burt, Don’t Read Poetry.
“The poet as windowpane,” The New Criterion, April 2019, Review of Jonathan Blunk, James Wright: A Life in Poetry.
“Surviving the Silence: On a Long Poem by Christian Wiman,” Literary Matters, Winter 2019 (11:2), Essay on Christian Wiman’s poem “The Parable of Perfect Silence”.
2018
“Of Poets and Patriarchs,” The American Scholar web essay, 1 November 2018, Review of Colm Toibin, Mad, Bad, and Dangerous To Know: The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats, and Joyce.
“A Truce with Disillusionment,” Literary Matters, Fall 2018 (11:1), Review of David Yezzi, Black Sea.
“Metre-Making Arguments,” Essays in Criticism, 2 April 2018 (Vol. 68, Issue 2), Review of Robert Hass, A Little Book on Form: An Exploration into the Formal Imagination of Poetry.
2017
Washington Post, 3 May 2017, Review of Peter Brooks, Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris.
2014
“‘Philology’ by James Turner explains what happened to a discipline that flourished,” Washington Post, 20 August 2014, Review of James Turner, Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities.
2013
“Complicating Jonson,” Essays in Criticism, October 2013 (Volume 63, Issue 4), Review of Ian Donaldson, Ben Johnson: A Life.
“Dennis O’Driscoll (1954-2012): An Appreciation,” Contemporary Poetry Review, 4 Feb. 2013.
2010
“Shorter notice,” The New Criterion, September 2010, Review of Clive James, The Blaze of Obscurity: Unreliable Memoirs: Volume V.
“The Last Pre-Raphaelite?”, Essays in Criticism, July 2010 (Volume 60, Issue 3), Review of Laura Colombino (ed.), Ford Madox Ford and Visual Culture.
2008
“Tom Disch: Work Ethicist of American Poetry,” Contemporary Poetry Review, 1 September 2008.
“The Bright Underside of Every Dark Thing,” Contemporary Poetry Review. Talk given at West Chester University Poetry Conference, 2008.
2007
“The Other Wiman,” Contemporary Poetry Review, 8 July 2007. Review of Christian Wiman, Hard Night and The Long Home.
“Pounding the Catalogue,” Contemporary Poetry Review, 8 July 2007. Review of “Ezra Pound in His Time and Beyond: The Influence of Ezra Pound on Twentieth-Century Poetry,” Special Collections Exhibit, University of Delaware Library (curator: Jesse Rossa; catalogue published by the University of Delaware Library).
2006
“Mr. Empath,” The New Criterion, October 2006, Review of R.K. Narayan, Everyman’s Library 2-volume edition of Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts, The Dark Room, The English Teacher, Mr. Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi, The Financial Expert, and Waiting for the Mahatma.
“‘Resistance and Sweet Traction’: Heaney as Poet of the Underground,” Contemporary Poetry Review, 8 July 2006. Essay on Seamus Heaney’s poem “District and Circle.”
“A Further Range,” Contemporary Poetry Review, 8 July 2006. Interview with Glyn Maxwell.
2005
“The Gatekeeper,” Washington Post, 21 August 2005, Review of Philip Ziegler, Man of Letters: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Literary Impresario Rupert Hart-Davis.
“Confidence Artist,” Contemporary Poetry Review, 8 July 2005. Review of Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early.
“The Civilized Yawp,” Contemporary Poetry Review, 8 July 2005. Review of William Baer, Fourteen on Form: Conversations with Poets.
“The Naturalization of Anne Stevenson,” Contemporary Poetry Review. Talk given at West Chester University Poetry Conference, 2005.
2004
“Justice’s Sentimental Journey,” Contemporary Poetry Review, 29 December 2004. Essay on Donald Justice.
“The Heart of a Writer Who Mattered,” Washington Post, 3 October 2004. Review of Norman Sherry, The Life of Graham Greene: Volume Three (1955-1991).
“Tricks to Set the River on Fire: Feigned Eloquence in Lowell,” Contemporary Poetry Review, 8 July 2004. Review of Collected Poems of Robert Lowell.
“The Yellow Pages of Poetry: Notes on the New Norton,” Contemporary Poetry Review, 8 July 2004. Review of The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, 3rd. edition (ed. Jahan Ramazani).
“Sacred Thread,” The American Scholar, Spring 2004 (Vol. 73, No. 2), Review of Axel Michaels (trans. Barbara Harshaw), Hinduism: Past and Present.
2003
“Turbulence and Grace,” Washington Post, 2003 August 3. Review of Robert Lowell, Collected Poems.
“Dana Gioia’s Defenders of the Modernist-Romantic Tradition,” 8 July 2003. Review of Dana Gioia, Can Poetry Matter? (10th anniversary edition)
2002
“Classical Modern,” Washington Post, 17 November 2002. Review of Adam Kirsch, The Thousand Wells.
Washington Post, 6 January 2002, Review of Jens Christian Grondahl, Silence in October.
“Unreliable Bearings: W.G. Sebald’s Trilogy,” Verse: The Prose Issue, 2002 (Vol. 19., No. 1&2). Essay on W.G. Seabed’s Vertigo, The Rings of Saturn, and The Emigrants.
“Designed for a Lifetime of Becoming: The Poetic Debut of Adam Kirsch,” 2002. Contemporary Poetry Review. Review of Adam Kirsch, The Thousand Wells.
2001
“The Perforated Hymn,” The American Scholar, Winter 2001 (Vol. 70, No. 1), Review of Stephen Mitchell, Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation.
2000
“Appearance Matters: An essayist reflects on the pleasures of passion, film and photography,” San Francisco Chronicle, 24 October 2000. Review of Anne Hollander, Feeding the Eye.
“The Man Who Made Political Writing an Art,” San Francisco Chronicle, 1 October 2000. Review of Jeffrey Meyers, Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation.
“Books in Brief,” New York Times Book Review, 24 September 2000. Review of Adam Zagajewski, Another Beauty.
“Books in Brief,” New York Times Book Review, 3 September 2000. Review of Maxine Kumin, Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry.
“Mexico: Civil War Prep,” Washington Post, 29 May 2000. Review of Jeff Shaara, Gone for Soldiers.
“Way of All Flesh,” Washington Post, 28 May 28, 2000. Review of Rose Tremain, Music and Silence.
“India as a Nation of Contradictions,” San Francisco Chronicle, 26 March 2000. Review of India: A Mosaic (ed., Robert Silvers and Barbara Epstein).
“Surrendering to Love in the Present Moment,” San Francisco Chronicle, 2 January 2000. Review of Anita Shreve, Fortune’s Rocks.
1999
“Sisters Entangled in 1940s Hong Kong: Two young women flee to the city and attempt to survive there,” San Francisco Chronicle, 10 October 1999. Review of Gail Tsukiyama, The Language of Threads.
“Boarding School Thriller is a Story of Crime and Self-Punishment,” San Francisco Chronicle, 27 June 1999. Review of Stephen Dobyns, Boy in the Water.
“Poor Little Rich Hollywood Girl: Childhood is hard when no one knows what’s real,” San Francisco Chronicle, 30 May 1999. Review of Diane Leslie, Fleur de Leigh’s Life of Crime.
“Biographer Reflects on Robert Frost with Warmth, Clarity,” San Francisco Chronicle, 18 April 1999. Review of Jay Parini, Robert Frost: A Life.
“Above it All,” The American Scholar, Spring 1999 (Vol. 68, No. 2). Review of Theodore Ziolkowski, The View from the Tower: Origins of an Antimodernist Image
“The Wilson Quarterly,” Spring 1999. Review of John Hollander, The Work of Poetry
1998
“Inertia and Indecency,” The Boston Book Review, 1998. Review of T. Coraghessan Boyle, Riven Rock.
1997
“Indians in Three Worlds,” Washington Post, 6 April 1997, Review of Vikram Chandra, Love and Longing in Bombay; Meera Syal, Anita and Me; and Meena Alexander, Manhattan Music.
1996
“A Poet’s Will,” Washington Post, 11 August 1996. Review of Jeffrey Meyer, Robert Frost: A Biography.
1995
“The Master is Dead,” Far Eastern Economic Review, 5 October 1995. Review of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Shades of Memory