From a draft of a letter written in 1940 by Joan Murray (1917–42) to W. H. Auden (1907–73). The letter is included in Drafts, Fragments, and Poems, a collection of…

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The innovations of A.R. Ammons

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From an interview conducted by Stephen Braitman with Allen Ginsberg and his father, Louis Ginsberg, in 1974. The interview is included in First Thought, a collection of conversations with Allen…

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A Jamaican-born poet chain-smokes as he listens to a circle of drummers in the old market of Marrakesh, circa 2015. The drums sound in the present, but they also sound…

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Ted Hughes’s evasions

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The battle over Pablo Neruda’s corpse.

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From a previously unpublished journal entry by Allen Ginsberg, dated February 18–19, 1965, and collected in The Essential Ginsberg, which will be published next month by Harper Perennial. In 1965, Ginsberg accepted…

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The battle over Pablo Neruda’s corpse

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From a letter by Samuel Beckett, dated February 14, 1957, responding with what he called “heart-felt sympathy” to queries from a German translator of his 1935 poetry collection Echo’s Bones…

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