Polonius behind the curtain

In Defense of Polonius

Shakespeare’s tedious old fool was also a dad just doing his best.
King Arthur's knights, gathered at the Round Table to celebrate Pentecost, see a vision of the Holy Grail.

T. S. Eliot and the Holy Grail

The Nobel Laureate drew on a centuries-old legend when he put the Fisher King in The Waste Land.
Women walk on a bustling city street looking at store windows

Grand Illusions

By the time L. Frank Baum introduced the world to Dorothy and the gang, he’d already made his name as a shop window dresser par excellence.
Ornament for title page of The Columbian Magazine for the year 1789

Reading Aloud in the Early Republic

Magazines of the freshly founded United States drew legitimacy and stability from the collective voice and sociability of their editors.
T.S. Eliot and Groucho Marx

All Male Cats Are Named Tom: Or, the Uneasy Symbiosis between T. S. Eliot and Groucho Marx

Class and religious differences, among other factors, thwarted the would-be friendship between two cultural titans, suggesting opposites attract, but may not adhere.
Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror by Parmigianino

The New York School Poets

From Bernadette Mayer to Joan Mitchell. Tracing the path from the New York School poets to their painter friends.
The First "Computer Bug" Moth found trapped between points at Relay # 70, Panel F, of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator at Harvard University, 9 September 1947.

The Bug in the Computer Bug Story

Soon after a team of engineers discovered a moth in a machine at Harvard, the word "bug" became a standard part of the programmer's lexicon. Or did it?
A poster for the 175th Anniversary of Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861)

Ukraine’s National Poet

Perhaps no other bard has captured the sentiments of Ukraine and its emigrants as fully as Taras Shevchenko.
From the cover of The Angolite, Volume 25 & 26

Reconciling with Violence through Poetry

A poem in The Angolite reconciles with the lethal violence of prison through creative expression.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1913

13 Ways of Looking at Edna St. Vincent Millay

Poet, lover, outspoken political activist. Vincent, in all her complicated glory.