Adam Kirsch
Vistas of Perfection
A profile of writer James Agee, at Harvard and beyond
Montage | November-December 2007
A Poet's Warning
In June 1946, Harvard celebrated its long-awaited Victory Commencement. For the first time since the end of the Second World War, alumni and...
Features | November-December 2006
Seamus Heaney, profiled by Adam Kirsch
One of the most revealing questions you can ask about any poet has to do with his sense of responsibility. To whom or what does he hold himself...
Rereading the Renaissance
The only thing most teachers and students of the humanities agree on, it often seems, is that these are troubled times for their field. For a...
The Rebellion of E.E. Cummings
Literary critics have found any number of ways to divide writers into opposing teams. Isaiah Berlin distinguished between...
Features | November-December 2004
The Hack as Genius
Earlier this year, Houghton Library announced one of the most exciting donations in its history: the Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Dr...
The Brahmin Rebel
Last year, the publication of his Collected Poems returned Robert Lowell '39 to the center stage of American poetry. From 1946, when he won the...
Features | November-December 2001
The "Five-foot Shelf" Reconsidered
"On or about December, 1910," Virginia Woolf wrote, "human character changed." Woolf was not referring to a specific event...