Every issue has one section dedicated to a particular question. Collecting responses from a range of perspectives, these symposia prompt us to think about the values and ideas that shape our most urgent cultural and personal decisions.
“Why can’t we determine what poetry is for simply by asking what it does?”
Class Dismissed
If a poetic tradition represents the aversions and longings of the class that produced it, then the conclusion to be drawn from studying the poetry…
The Last of the Iron Men
That the American poet was distinctly guided by “his own necessity” rather than by an accepted set of literary standards was a powerful idea for…
Demagoguery and Poetry
Robert Penn Warren’s descriptions of life along the Cumberland River or the struggles of Jacksonian America demonstrate an anti-elitist esteem for his subject matter. And…
Poet at Work
How should a poet make money? This is a terrible question, and has no satisfactory answer.
Pure Madness
It took me weeks of wandering through fields of garbage and government-issued apartment blocks to discover what anyone who has ever sought “Joyce’s Dublin” or…
Casebook
Somebody asked a cynical male poet: “What are your poems about?” The poet showed his dimples and batted his eyes and said: “Me.” Another time…
