Anahid Nersessian

LA Elegies

Two poets take up meter and rhyme to consider the city of Blade Runner and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

Catastrophic Desires

The intention behind Forough Farrokhzad’s poetry, particularly her erotic poetry, was not just to express herself but to match the complexities of twentieth-century life.

Knife Skills

Winter Recipes from the Collective, Louise Glück’s first collection since winning the Nobel, is a work of extreme concision, in which complicated feelings have been pared down to their minimum.

Uncertain in Love

Late Romanticism

“Many of my closest friends are poets, and it seems like a pretty serious affliction.”

Love for Sale

Eva Illouz’s The End of Love presents a world starkly divided between male and female, straight and gay, sex and love, dignity and humiliation.

The Escape Artist

Richard Zenith takes a panoramic approach to Fernando Pessoa’s biography, setting the writer’s orderly, insular way of life against the riotous backdrop of the early twentieth century.