Essays

Essays

The Critic as Friend

The challenge of reading generously
Merve Emre
The Moment

A Reviewer’s Life

The material constraints of writing criticism today
Christine Smallwood
The Moment

Palestinian Solidarity, Then and Now

The power of encampment as a form of protest
Feisal G. Mohamed
Tribute

Paul Auster

Why the novelist’s brand of postmodern detective fiction still matters
Ben Libman
Essays

Critical Navel-Gazing

If criticism is in crisis, it’s not the critic’s problem
Namwali Serpell
Essays

I, Too, Am John Clare

Becoming a different kind of postcolonial writer
Amit Chaudhuri

Browse

Essays

A photograph of a train station in Russia at night.
Journals

A Journey Across Siberia

Penetrating the Soviet Union in 1967
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
July 1, 2015
From The Archives

My Old Printer

Anne Fadiman
March 12, 2011
Essays

The Republic of Letters

Edith Wharton at the Start of Her Career
Hermione Lee
April 1, 2007
Graphic with loaves of bread and water bottles on a black and orange background. Illustration by Laura Padilla Castellanos
Essays

Loaf or Hot-Water Bottle

Closely Translating Proust
Lydia Davis
April 1, 2004
From the Archives

Secret Maps

Holly Wright's Photographs of Hands
Charles Simic
October 1, 1996
Black and white photo of light coming through windows in the apse of San Vitale in Ravenna with mosaics. Courtesy N.P. Sullo.
Essays

Days of 1952

On the rapture of experiencing art in solitude
James Merrill
April 1, 1992
From the Archives

From My Cornell Notebooks

Charles Simic
April 1, 1992
A stack of old issues of The Yale Review. Courtesy Pentagram
From the Archives

Short Talks

Anne Carson
July 1, 1991
From the Archives

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

James Merrill
December 1, 1989
From the Archives

The First Eighteen Lines of The Waste Land

Anthony Hecht
December 1, 1989