Essays Online (Selected)
“Trees Are Complicated: H.D. Casts a Spell,” London Review of Books 45:3, 2 February 2023
“Prejudice Rules,” on the overturning of Roe v. Wade, London Review of Books 44:14, 21 July 2022
“Under and Over,” on Emily Dickinson and pandemic distances, FSG “Works in Progress,” April 2021
“This Is Not an Essay on Poetry of the Past Twenty Years,” Public Books, 5 October 2020
“A Conversation That Took the Place, Provisionally, of a Poem” (A short play), with Laura M. Slatkin, Wallace Stevens Journal 44:1 (2020), 67-71
“Projects, Poetries, Choratopes: On Anne Boyer, Bhanu Kapil, and Juliana Spahr,” Los Angeles Review of Books, 5 June 2016
“Seven Poets on the Verge,” Vela Magazine, 23 March 2016; also featured on The Poetry Foundation
Review of Anne Boyer, Garments Against Women (Ahsahta Press, 2015), New York Times Sunday Book Review, 27 December 2015
“Notes on Florence: a Gathering of Flowers—I Fiori,” Grey Magazine, Summer 2015, 126-136, online 1 October 2016
“Murder Ballads, Narcocorridos, and Border Songs: On Writing “Debatable Land,’” FSG “Works in Progress,” July 2014
“It Chooses You: Notes on Romantic Resonance,” FSG “Works in Progress,” May 2014
“On Lorca’s Poet in New York,” FSG “Works in Progress,” 18 April 2013
“Thoughts and Divagations,” on listening to W. C. Williams, William Bronk, Fanny Howe, & Dorothea Lasky,” Catalyst: A Comparative Listening Series, Harvard University Poetry Room, Spring 2013
“My Marianne Moore,” Poetry, May 2012
“My H. D.,” Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 2012
“Why I Write,” Publishers Weekly, 23 March 2012
Review, Poems for the Millennium (3): The University of California Book of Romantic and Postromantic Poetry, ed. Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey C. Robinson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net no. 57-58 (February-May 2010), online March 2012
Interview with Susan Howe, The Art of Poetry 97, The Paris Review 203, Winter 2012
“British Romanticism Unbound: Reading The Reading Nation by William St Clair,” Critique (Paris), Special Issue on Romanticism, June 2009; long version in Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net no. 57-58 (February-May 2010), published online May 2011
On Rachel Zucker, Museum of Accidents (Wave Books), Critical Mass, blog of the National Book Critics Circle, posted 16 Feb. 2010
On Louise Glück, A Village Life (FSG), Critical Mass, blog of the National Book Critics Circle Directors’ Board,posted 11 Feb. 2010
Response to “Some Darker Bouquets,” On the state of contemporary poetry criticism, Mayday 1, Spring 2009
“Song and Silence: My Fanny Howe,” Boston Review, March/April 2009
“Twisting and Turning: A Divagation on the Poetic Turn,” American Poet 26, April 2009, online at poets.org, The Academy of American Poets
“Emily Dickinson: post-9/11 poet?,” Boston Review, May/June 2008
On Michael O’Brien, Sleeping and Waking: poems (Flood), Critical Mass, NBCC, posted 28 February 2008
“In Retrospect: On John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,” Critical Mass, NBCC Directors’ blog, posted 23 September 2008
“The Crucible: Sex Education in the United States,” Boston Review, feature essay, January/February 2007
Fall Books, roundup of 18 new poetry titles for The Poetry Foundation, posted 18 October 2006
“Underworlds,” Review of Louise Glück, Averno, The Washington Post Book World, 2 July 2006
Review of Lucie Brock-Broido, Trouble in Mind (poems), The New York Times Book Review, February 29, 2004
Review of August Kleinzahler, The Strange Hours Travelers Keep (poems), The New York Times Book Review, February 22, 2004
Review of James McCourt, Queer Street, The New York Times Book Review, December 14, 2003
Review of Henri Cole, Middle Earth (poems), The New York Times Book Review, April 27, 2003
“City Poems: Ten Weeks with the East Harlem Poetry Project,” Boston Review feature essay, April/May 2003