Comparing Poems

Comparing Poems

Comparison is one of the best ways of teaching anything; it is especially useful for reading and teaching poems. In his ABC of Reading, a book about poetry, American modernist poet and critic Ezra Pound recommends that we study poems in the manner of biologists...
The Widow of Ephesus

The Widow of Ephesus

Among the pleasures of reading fiction is encountering brief tales with surprising endings—“The Monkey’s Paw,” for example, or “The Lottery,” and stories with ironic endings, such as those by O. Henry or Guy de Maupassant. One of my favorites is an ancient Roman tale:...
Villanelle Variations

Villanelle Variations

  1. Learning by Going “I learn by going where I have to go,” writes Theodore Roethke in “The Waking.” “The art of losing isn’t hard to master,” avers Liz Bishop’s speaker in “One Art.” These lessons in living we aim to master as we try to learn where we need to...
SUBTEXTWendy Wasserstein: from Tender Offer

SUBTEXT
Wendy Wasserstein: from Tender Offer

Subtext—Wendy Wasserstein: from Tender Offer To interpret characters and their objectives accurately, we frequently need to look beneath the surface of a play’s dialogue and consider its subtext. Russian director and teacher Constantin Stanislavsi considered the...