To Draw the Mortal Hours: On James Matthew Wilson’s “The Strangeness of the Good”
Patrick Kurp appreciates the humility and plain speech of James Matthew Wilson’s poetic chronicle of the pandemic in “The Strangeness of the Good.”
Patrick Kurp appreciates the humility and plain speech of James Matthew Wilson’s poetic chronicle of the pandemic in “The Strangeness of the Good.”
Patrick Kurp finds a “stylized, vigorous, clear” Baudelaire in Aaron Poochigian’s translation of “The Flowers of Evil.”
Patrick Kurp reads “Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978-1994,” a memoir by the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Patrick Kurp admires the “Collected Poems” of the renowned historian Robert Conquest, whose verse “ranges from the ribald to the wittily rarefied.”
Patrick Kurp reads and rereads “Sketches of the Criminal World,” the second volume of Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma stories translated by Donald Rayfield.
Patrick Kurp sings the praises of light verse, from Ogden Nash to the present day.
Patrick Kurp on the artfully rendered accounts of suffering in “Kolyma Stories” by Varlam Shalamov, translated by Donald Rayfield.
Patrick Kurp explores “A Bountiful Harvest: The Correspondence of Anthony Hecht and William L. MacDonald,” edited by Philip Hoy.
Patrick Kurp on “The Day Will Pass Away: The Diary of a Gulag Prison Guard: 1935-1936” and “Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial.”
Patrick Kurp revisits the poems of Richard Wilbur, who passed away on October 14 at age 96.
Patrick Kurp takes the measure of “Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets,” edited by William Baer.
Patrick Kurp listens in to “Conversations with Vladimir Nabokov,” edited by Robert Golla.