New Criterion articles from April 2004

New Criterion archives from April 2004

Notes & comments: April 2004.(Editorial)(Obituary)
April 1, 2004... "Neville again" The despicable bombings by the Muslim jihadists in Madrid on March 11 claimed 200 lives (and wounded another 1400); they also formed a prelude to the most important event in international politics since September 11, 2001....

Of lapdogs & loners: American poetry today.(Lengthened shadows: VIII)
April 1, 2004... When I was eight years old, and living with my grandmother near Miami, I received a copy of Walter Scott's book-length poem Marmion for my birthday. Perhaps my grandmother, English-born and raised in Victorian times, remembered the custom she...

Elizabeth Bishop: from coterie to canon.
April 1, 2004... Time to plant tears, says the almanac.--"Sestina" "Oh, please," Elizabeth Bishop once told me, "Let's not talk about poetry." And that afternoon we didn't. But now, thirty years later, my friend and teacher is no longer here to stop me...

The morality of Anthony Hecht.
April 1, 2004... Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.--Pascal, quoted by Anthony Hecht Some poets cavil at the notion of a "collected poems" in their lifetime. While I can't quite imagine it, I think I see their...

The three voices of contemporary poetry.
April 1, 2004... We think of ourselves as having voices, but these days our poets are voices. That is to say, the word "voice" has come to be synonymous with the word "poet" in all of those venues in which we discuss poetry, ranging from critical essays and...

Free of our humbug: notes on Basil Bunting.
April 1, 2004... All through my twenties I read Basil Bunting with a kind of avid awe. The sounds and forms of his poems seemed to me at once remote and exemplary, too singular to learn from in any direct way, perhaps, and yet guiding examples nonetheless. I...

Reflections on the oldest profession.(robbery and prostitution in literature)
April 1, 2004... As a child, I must have passed an old pub called the Spaniards Inn, on the road between Hampstead and Highgate, a thousand times. The road narrowed there to a single lane, causing hold-ups to the traffic, because on the other side of the road...

The well or the cup.(New poems)(Brief Article)(Poem)
April 1, 2004... The well or the cup How can you tell at the start what you can give away and what you must hold to your heart. What is the well and what is a cup. Some people get drunk up....

Thieves.(New poems)(Brief Article)(Poem)
April 1, 2004... Thieves There are thieves in the mind, their dens in places we'd prefer not to know. When a word is lifted from its spot, we show no surprise, replacing supplies with provender. Out...

The material.(New poems)(Brief Article)(Poem)
April 1, 2004... The material The ratio between the material Cornell collected and the material that ended up in his boxes was probably a thousand to one. --Deborah Solomon, Joseph Cornell Whatever is done leaves a hole in the ...

Shipwreck.(New poems)(Brief Article)(Poem)
April 1, 2004... Shipwreck I was shipwrecked beneath a stormless sky in a sea shallow enough to stand up in. --Fernando Pessoa They're laughable when we get there-- the ultimate articulations of despair: trapped in a tub...

Mowers.(New poems)(Brief Article)(Poem)
April 1, 2004... Mowers Untended two months in my absence, our backyard's pigweed and razorgrass stood waist high against my weed-eater's murderous blade. I bent, off balance, and scythed tight crescents, mowing with no plan--that...

Christopher Columbus Park.(New poems)(Brief Article)(Poem)
April 1, 2004... Christopher Columbus Park Checkers, bocce, some days rummy or hearts, early fall under chestnut trees. Then winter, inside the rec center, bingo and widows while snow dazes 8th St.'s traffic lights. Summer, finally,...

Public transit.(New poems)(Brief Article)(Poem)
April 1, 2004... Public transit Aboard the train, the usual thing: a conversation overheard, then eavesdropped on: two friends discussing an absent third, their heads ashake with sympathy, in shared concern their voices hushed;...

An island paradise in Boston.(Art)(Boston Museum of Fine Arts exhibition of paintings by Paul Gauguin)
April 1, 2004... Poor Paul Gauguin. Not only do most undergraduates persist in spelling his name without the second "u" but he is also a victim of what a colleague calls the "Van Gogh's Ear Syndrome"--or, in this case, the "Polynesian Babe Syndrome?' Thanks to...

Concert note.(Don Giovanni)(Opera Review)
April 1, 2004... Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York Mozart's Don Giovanni may be one of the handful of works vying for the "greatest" title--and certainly one which has been subject to reams of paper and gallons of ink. Nonetheless it is...

"Root-causeism" & electability.(The media)(grassroots movements against the reelection of George W. Bush)
April 1, 2004... The cliche of this primary season--and, like most cliches, it's probably true--is that the Democrats are fired up with hatred for and resentment against President Bush this election year. Or, in the jargon of the political professionals that is...

America--c'est moi! Alfred Kazin on American literature.(Books)
April 1, 2004... "A wit said of Gibbon's autobiography," wrote Walter Bagehot, "that he did not know the difference between himself and the Roman Empire." Something similar may be said of the career that Alfred Kazin (1915-1998) devoted to the two subjects that...

As seen on TV.(The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved)(Book Review)
April 1, 2004... Todd Oppenheimer The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved. Random Home, 481 pages, $24.95 Remember the digital divide, the alarm spread by the White House, governors, and advocacy...

Race: no such thing.(Race: The Reality of Human Differences)(Book Review)
April 1, 2004... Vincent Sarich & Frank Miele Race: The Reality of Human Differences. Westview Press, 320 pages, $27.50 What response would you get were you to ask almost any college student or member of the current, self-identified American...

The political person.(Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left)(Book Review)
April 1, 2004... Susan Braudy Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left. Knopf, 496 pages, $27.95 Much remains to be learned about the origins of political fanaticism, the connections between consuming resentment and the taking of radical...

Guilty as charged.(Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?)(Book Review)
April 1, 2004... David Fromkin Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914? Alfred A. Knopf, 349 pages, $26.95 I write you under the black cloud of portentous events on this side of the world, horrible, unspeakable, iniquitous things--I mean...