Anahid Nersessian

The Couple Form

Two new poetry collections embrace the potential of traditional forms and of breaking away from them.

Reckoning with Silence

Dionne Brand’s poetry has the weight and sonority of prophetic utterance without a hint of melodrama.

The Hunter

Björk has always been a techno-utopian, and the environmentalist strain in her music has only grown more pronounced over time.

A Vivisectional Style

A new biography of John Donne argues for the sensuality and strangeness of both his work and his life.

Creature Comforts

Lena Dunham’s Catherine Called Birdy brings to boisterous life Karen Cushman’s novel of medieval girlhood.

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.