Shotgun

Frank Bidart thinks lyric poets (deployers of “verbal filigree”) are drunk.

Walt Whitman was a cult leader, sort of. He kissed Oscar Wilde, but also received lascivious attentions of another kind.

You, yes you, are awash with diatoms.

Why do less and less people give a damn about literature? Maybe because the critics have demanded that any cultural artifact be evaluated politically rather than aesthetically.

Scholarship means never having to admit that an aardvark isn’t a medium-sized inflatable banana.

Sometimes, I write my name on my underpants.