Purchase this and other timeless New Criterion essays in our hard-copy reprint series. Despite the ubiquity of the usage, it was not always so: John Dryden and Alexander Pope did not speak of a poet’s ...

For poetry-dramatic poetry above all-is no more the vision of a life that is dead than it is a criticism of the life that now is. Rather it is interpretation-life itself got into perspective, so that ...

ONE would feel happier about the future of poetry on the stage were it not for the defensiveness of those who proclaim it. Poetry had used the theatre and the theatre had used poetry for thousands of ...

“The first is the voice of the poet talking to himself—or to nobody. The second is the voice of the poet addressing an audience, whether large or small. The third is the voice of the poet when he ...