Mark Edmundsen’s indictment of contemporary poetry in Harper’s set tongues wagging around the internet. Reporting for Castalia, Jeremy Axelrod explores the reaction, as well as the long, lively history of the critic’s lament.
Melissa Green remembers her relationship with Derek Walcott and the beginnings of her debut collection, The Squanicook Eclogues
On the new issue.
Recalling Albert Goldbarth’s debut at Parnassus.
Announcing Farrar, Straus, and Giroux’s publication of Parnassus Co-Editor Ben Downing’s Queen Bee of Tuscany.
On literary humor from “America’s Finest News Source.”
Morris Dickstein discusses the role of the critic in literary life and lays down a few principles of good criticism.Read more…
A short review of Matthew Zapruder’s latest book, Come On All You Ghosts. Read more…
The Parnassus Staff takes a look at the venerable, but much derided, institution of the blurb. We offer a few pointers about what makes for a good blurb and explain why blurbeurs should avoid the word “luminous” at all costs. Read More…
“He’s not crazy, he just talks too much.” So said William Carlos Williams of Ezra Pound in the years following World War II. Few literary friendships can compare to their strange, contentious alliance, which spanned sixty years, ending with Williams’s death in 1963. Herbert Leibowitz tells the story. Read More…
