Langdon Hammer

Alert to Reality

The first biography of James Schuyler suggests that his tendency to withdraw was both a harbinger of his disabling mood disorder and the wellspring of his shimmering poetry.

Grandfather’s Bible

In the world of her grandparents in rural Nova Scotia, Elizabeth Bishop found a deep well of inspiration—and Christian beliefs she would always struggle against.

‘The Kingdom of Ends’

Though he began writing near the end of the twentieth century, the poet Reginald Shepherd remained an unapologetic modernist who believed firmly in the autonomy of art.

Letters: Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Art Form or Something’

Announcing, in a letter from 1971, that she planned to teach a seminar at Harvard “on ‘Letters’!,” Bishop described the subject matter as “Just letters—as an art form or something.”

The Art of Losing

‘The Dolphin Letters, 1970–1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle’

Crane's 'The Bridge'

As he worked on The Bridge, Hart Crane referred to the challenge of describing it: “It is almost impossible to say what it is about without resorting to the actual metaphors of the poem.” He was right. There is no way to understand the poem by standing outside it.

Inside & Underneath Words