Poems irritated me as a child. They seemed parodies of counting, chants of rhythm, and repetition. I included them in my moratorium against reading fiction. On the other hand, I respected the alphabet, a kind of poem of pure form. It was orderly for no good reason and didn't mean anything. So I concluded that poems were meaningless forms that had their uses, but were not serious. I changed my mind, but it took a while—studying math and science, theology, and then philosophy and literature. I'm now a professor who studies and teaches modern literature and philosophy. I got my Ph.D. from Harvard, became a professor at Stanford, and teach at the University of Dallas.
T.J. Clark’s diary explorations of two Poussin paintings in The Sight of Death integrates an acuity of seeing with a searching intelligence that is simultaneously content, historical, personal, and linguistic.
He puzzles through a visceral sense of revelatory permanence in Poussin, a discovery of form in the details of painting: “Aren’t there plenty of moments in life that, whether they last or not, have enough of permanence about them to stand for things as they are, things as the mind conceives them –and not just to stand for them notionally, but have them be visible on their face?” He reveals this face.
A renowned art historian confronts the specific powers of painting, and the hold of the visual image on the viewer's imagination
Why do we find ourselves returning to certain pictures time and again? What is it we are looking for? How does our understanding of an image change over time? In his latest book T. J. Clark addresses these questions-and many more-in ways that steer art writing into new territory.
In early 2000 two extraordinary paintings by Poussin hung in the Getty Museum in a single room, Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake (National Gallery, London) and the…
Any marriage can fall apart. We can become lost to each other. But we can also re-find each other.
In many ways, a marriage is constantly a remarriage. The philosopher Stanley Cavell, my Ph.D. advisor at Harvard, wrote a brilliant book about what he calls the remarriage comedies of the late 30s and early 40s.
The films are great on their own—The Philadelphia Story, The Awful Truth, etc—, but their power and wisdom becomes part of a profound philosophical conversation through Cavell’s inquiry and voice. My own book explores love and marriage in resonant, but different ways.
During the '30s and '40s, Hollywood produced a genre of madcap comedies that emphasized reuniting the central couple after divorce or separation. Their female protagonists were strong, independent, and sophisticated. Here, Stanley Cavell names this new genre of American film-"the comedy of remarriage"-and examines seven classic movies for their cinematic techniques and for such varied themes as feminism, liberty, and interdependence.
Included are Adam's Rib, The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, It Happened One Night, The Lady Eve, and The Philadelphia Story.
Events that happen to us can damn us or liberate us. We will not always know which.
Stories can help show these events and their consequences, even if they might not give them any real or acceptable meaning. But our descriptions of these events can help us see our life amidst the powers of the events. Heda Margolius Kovaly offers an admirable and brilliant example in her memoir Under a Cruel Star.
The memoir is a remarkable achievement of clarity, focus, and wisdom. Her life is more than that.
Heda Margolius Kovaly's memoir of the crisis of modern Czech history recounts the tragedies and terrors in the life of a young Jewish woman, beginning with the Nazi invasion and her deportation to Auschwitz. She eventually returned to Prague, where she took part in the May 1945 uprising.
The postwar years brought hardship and fears of a new kind under Stalinism. She poignantly recounts the arrest of her husband, his conviction in the infamous 1952 Slansky trial, and his execution. Kovaly proceeds to fill in the colorless years that marked Czechoslovakia until 1968, ending on the bittersweet note that was…
A photograph gives me the form of the bird, but it remains up to me to see the bird as a bird. And that can be difficult. What do we see when we see a bird?
The Peregrine, J. A. Baker’s masterpiece of descriptive prose, provides an answer, an answer that is as much about how we see as it is about what we see when we see birds. Sometimes we pull ourselves into the sight of others and the world emerges as more than its light. We see by being seen.
Baker achieves this kind of seeing both in his efforts to see a pair of peregrines and in his description of this achievement.
David Attenborough reads J. A. Baker's extraordinary classic of British nature writing.
The nation's greatest voice, David Attenborough, reads J. A. Baker's extraordinary classic of British nature writing, The Peregrine.
J. A. Baker's classic of British nature writing was first published in 1967. Greeted with acclaim, it went on to win the Duff Cooper Prize, the pre-eminent literary prize of the time. Luminaries such as Ted Hughes, Barry Lopez and Andrew Motion have cited it as one of the most important books in twentieth-century nature writing.
Despite the association of peregrines with the wild, outer reaches of the British Isles,…
I could suggest any number of poems and poets of our everyday fate of being lost and found. But for me the modern poet who best integrates the eye seeing with the mind questioning is the great A.R. Ammons.
I have listed just Volume 1 of his collected poems, but I also recommend Volume 2. He writes out of a consciousness that poems are found and shaped out of a life of observation, effort, and passion.
A.R. Ammons produced some of the twentieth century's most innovative and enduring poetry, collected here for the first time in its entirety. Volume I follows Ammons's development through his National Book Award-winning Collected Poems 1951-1971 and his daring work of the 1970s. The second volume rounds out Ammons's rich middle phase and startling later work, including the posthumously published Bosh and Flapdoodle.
The Complete Poems of A.R. Ammons offers authoritative texts of every published poem and includes over one hundred previously uncollected poems by "unquestionably among the best-loved poets of our time" (David Lehman).
"I love you" is a poem of the everyday. It is a primal poem, one of the first we are likely to discover when we are children. My book is about such everyday poems, poems that claim us, events of form that happen to us. The poems we teach in school are formalizations of the everyday poems we live amidst, albeit blindly and carelessly. I pursue and resurrect these everyday poems.
Everyday Poetics consists of a set of interrelated literary and philosophical studies of the nature of poetry and interpretation as a mode of description, which are simultaneously a series of meditations on love, marriage, words, gestures, children, the sacred, and the dead. My goal is to establish the centrality of everyday poems in our lives.
I’ve always been fascinated by group dynamics, large and small. Why things functioned well, why they didn’t. It’s possible my ability to empathize and use humor as a consensus-builder is the reason I was elected president of a homeowners association, a music production association, and even an agricultural group. Books were not particularly involved in this fascination! But in recent years, experiencing the breakdown of civility and trust in our political and cultural discourse, I’ve taken a more analytical view of the dynamics. These books, in their very different ways, have taught me lessons about life, understanding those with different beliefs, and finding ways to connect and move forward.
We’ve all experienced the overwhelming level of political and social divisiveness in our country. This invisible “virus” of negativity is, in part, the result of the name-calling and heated rhetoric that has become commonplace among commentators and elected leaders alike.
My book provides a clear perspective on the historical and modern-day causes of our nation's divisive state. It then proposes easy-to-understand solutions—an action plan for our elected leaders and citizens as well. Rather than a scholarly treatment of a complex topic, the book challenges us to take the obvious steps required of those living in a free democracy. And it…
Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation
Lyle Greenfield's "Uniting the States of America―A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation" is a work of nonfiction and opinion. Incorporating the lessons of history and the ideas and wisdom of many, it is intended as both an educational resource and a call-to-action for citizens concerned about the politically and culturally divided state of our Union. A situation that has raised alarm for the very future of our democracy.
First, the book clearly identifies the causes of what has become a national crisis of belief in and love for our country. How the divisiveness and hostility rampant in our political…
