Writers & Poets 233
Poetry and the Common Language
This piece was originally posted at the University Bookman. Check out their site for other similar articles! --- If there is one principle which is nearly axiomatic among our contemporaries…
Going Home
The South, repatriated ex-slave Ned Douglass lectured his Louisiana neighbors in Ernest J. Gaines’s novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, is “yours because your people’s bones lays in it;…
Why We Need Jane Austen or How to be a Gentleman with Examples Good and Bad
Austen provides something for which young people—even the jaded ones—secretly long.
Wendell Berry and the New Urbanism: Agrarian Remedies, Urban Prospects
The problem is a result of the underlying specialization—not of people but of places—for what could be more specialized than designing a town according to discrete zones designated by use?
The Song of Taillefer
Somerset, NJ. Legend has it that on the field of Hastings, as the forces of the Conqueror ascended a hill to engage the exhausted army of Harold II, a certain…
Cowboy Poetry
An actual cowboy's life was a far cry from a John Wayne Western.
Is Western Civilization Un-American?
Thoughts on the "Andrew Jackson versus Mr. Peanut" debate.
For Craft and Country: Richard Wakefield’s Eminent Domain
Richard Wakefield’s book of poems takes its place as one more important and hard-won advance in the restoration of good poetry to our culture.
Two Literary Journeys
We have, until this day, indulged in our individualistic reveries, imagining that we are always free to “light out for the Territory” and leave the ills of communal life behind…
The Fighting Bobs
But then Dylan is 69, and old enough to remember when the people of his place looked askance at empire. There were giants in the earth in those days.
Torn Screen Door
Listen to the fierce and mournful "Torn Screen Door" by the Scottish-Canadian singer/songwriter David Francey.
A Gift from the Grievous Angel
Gram Parsons, Southern hippie aristocrat Byrd progenitor of “Cosmic American Music” who spent too much tyme eight miles high, expressed his Christian faith in a number of tunes, none lovelier…
American Graffiti
Where this latest tourist among the rustics goes wrong is in not crediting the stay-at-homes with the capacity to dream, and in not noticing that some of those who “got…
NPR Does Something Right
Diane Rehm has selected Wendell Berry’s novel Hannah Coulter as the “Reader Review” book for November. FPR's own Jason Peters will appear as the off-color commentator.
Kingsley Amis (!) On the Priesthood
Then it’s a bit up to you to be jolly crusty and jolly full of hell-fire and sin and damnation.
The American Conservative
Where else can one find such a wide ranging, wise, witty, and downright winsome collection of thinkers and writers in one tactile, fold-over-double, take-to-the-porcelain-throne, nap-with-on-the-couch, 100-percent-carpal-tunnel-free place?
Flowers (Potatoes?) in November? The Southern Tier Efflorescence
The dank and drear of Election Day and its hangover were dispelled by the appearance in my mailbox of books from two most admirable friends. John Rezelman—poet, wit,…
Rising Scientism, Declining Supernaturalism, and the Loss of Taste and Morals in W.G. Simms’ “Grayling”
William Gilmore Simms’ claims about the decay of morals and the arts that results from the rise of scientism and decline of supernaturalism can be elaborated by reflecting on the…
Handing Higher Ed to the Cripples: On John Williams’s “Stoner”
If there’s one thing we have in higher education today it’s a superfluity of bluster.