The Shield of Achilles By W.H. Auden (Princeton University Press, 93 pages, $23) The republication of W.H. Auden’s poetry collection, The Shield of Achilles, reminds us that Auden belongs in the hall of great Christian writers, not with the Left. I…
American poets pioneered free-form verse. Though Walt Whitman did write sometimes in traditional rhyme and meter, he is most famous for his stunning free-form poetry. It was controversial not only for its form but for his candor about the natural…
When the rejections began rolling in, there was a universal theme. All the editors of the big publishing houses had taken the time to read my new memoir, and they all emailed my veteran literary agent to say how great…
“I have a theory, and the theory is mine,” says the pompous twit on the old Monty Python show, “which is to say that it is my theory.” And after he engages in one pointless tautology after another, he delivers…
Nearly 60 years ago, the renowned prose stylist and infamous Catholic convert Evelyn Waugh passed away. On Easter Sunday (April 10) 1966, after attending a soon-to-be-banned Tridentine Mass, Waugh met his ignominious fate in the lavatory, reportedly having suffered a…
In some sense, writing is guesswork. You put words on a page and hope people like them — generally, some do, and some don’t. Writing is also an incredibly objective thing. Sentences are well-structured and paragraphs flow; if a writer…
When I was a boy riding the bus to our diocesan high school, an older kid sometimes sat in the seat next to me. He was an intelligent fellow who has since become a lawyer of considerable reputation. We might…
How far Lord Minamoto no Muneyuki had fallen. His grandfather was the former Emperor Kōkō, and his father the Imperial Prince Koretada, yet in the year 894 A.D. Muneyuki found himself reduced to commoner status by his uncle, the reigning Emperor…
In my last article, I described what I called ignorance to the third degree: ignorance that is proud of itself, that boasts of having discarded vast fields of human knowledge. Since any sane person will be a bit embarrassed when…
