• 19 Oct. 2006: “Coming in from the Cold”, review of The Discomfort Zone: “A Personal History, by Jonathan Franzen.
• 23 March 2006: “A Version of Pastoral”, review of All Will Be Well: “A Memoir, by John McGahern.
• 24 Oct. 2002: “Brotherhood without Fatherhood”, review of Why I Am a Catholic, by Garry Wills.
• 22 Feb. 2001: “The World Seen and Half-Seen”, review of The Hill Bachelors; Death in Summer (1998); After Rain (1996); Excursions in the Real World (1994) ; Nights at the Alexandra (1987); Fools of Fortune (1983); Two Lives (1991); The Collected Stories; (1993); Felicia’s Journey (1994), all by William Trevor.
• 11 May 2000: “The Fabulous Yeats Boys”, review of Jack Yeats, by Bruce Arnold; The Life of W.B. Yeats, by Terence Brown, and Yeats’s Ghosts: “The Secret Life of W.B. Yeats, by Brenda Maddox.
• 18 Nov. 1999:Lives of a Poet”, review of Crux: The Letters of James Dickey, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli & Judith S. Baughman; James Dickey: The Selected Poems edited with an intro., by Robert Kirschten, and The James Dickey Reader, ed. Henry Hart.
• 21 Oct. 1999: “Frost: The Icon and the Man”, review of Robert Frost: A Life, by Jay Parini, and Robert Frost and the Challenge of Darwin, by Robert Faggen.
• 20 May 1999: “Lover of Lost Causes”, review of Canaan and The Triumph of Love, both, by Geoffrey Hill.
• 19 Feb. 1998: “The Myth of W. B. Yeats”, review of W.B. Yeats: “A Life Vol. I: “The Apprentice Mage, by R. F. Foster, and The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats Vol. II: “1896-1900, ed. Warwick Gould, by John Kelly, by Deirdre Toomey.
• 28 Nov. 1996: “The Supreme Fiction”, review of Soul Says: “On Recent Poetry; The Breaking of Style: “Hopkins, Heaney, Graham, and The Given and the Made: “Strategies of Poetic Redefinition, all by Helen Vendler.
• 4 April 1996: “The Myths of Robert Graves”, review of Robert Graves and the White Goddess, 1940-1985, by Richard Perceval Graves; Robert Graves: Life on the Edge, by Miranda Seymour, and Robert Graves: His Life and Work revised and extended edition, by Martin Seymour-Smith. See also replies, by C. A. Schneck (July 11, 1996) and Jean Moorcroft Wilson (31 Oct. 1996)..
• 21 March 1996: “The Philosopher of Selfless Love”, review of Emmanuel Levinas, by Marie-Anne Lescourret; In the Time of the Nations, by Emmanuel Levinas, trans. by Michael B. Smith Outside the Subject, by Levinas, trans. by Smith; Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures, by Emmanuel Levinas, trans. by Gary D. Mole.
• 8 June 1995: “Kicking the Air”, review of How Late it Was, How Late, by James Kelman; The Dead School, by Patrick McCabe, and Walking the Dog and Other Stories, by Bernard MacLaverty.
• 26 May 1994: “The Delirium of the Brave”, review of In a Time of Violence, by Eavan Boland.
• 21 April 1994: “The Magic of W. B. Yeats”, review of Yeats’s ’Vision’ Papers, Vol. 1: The Automatic Script: “5 November 1917-18 June 1918 General editor: “George Mills Harper, ed. Steve L. Adams, by Barbara J. Frieling [&] Sandra L. Sprayberry; Yeats’s ‘Vision’ Papers, Vol. 2: The Automatic Script: 25 June 1918-29 March 1920 General editor: George Mills Harper, ed. Steve L. Adams, Barbara J. Frieling [&] Sandra L. Sprayberry; Yeats’s ‘Vision’ Papers, Vol. 3: “Sleep and Dream Notebooks, ‘Vision’ Notebooks 1 and 2, Card File General editor: George Mills Harper, ed. Robert Anthony Martinich [&] Margaret Mills Harper; The Gonne-Yeats Letters 1893-1938, ed. Anna MacBride White, by A. Norman Jeffares; Running to Paradise: Yeats’s Poetic Art, by M.L. Rosenthal; Yeats and Artistic Power, by Phillip L. Marcus. See also reply, by M. L. Rosenthal (May 11, 1995).
• 3 Feb. 1994: “Another Country”, review of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha; The Commitments; The Snapper, and The Van, all by Roddy Doyle.
• October 21, 1993: “Joyce’s Many Lives”, review of James Joyce: “The Years of Growth 1882-1915, by Peter Costello; James Joyce: A Literary Life, by Morris Beja; James Joyce’s Chamber Music: The Lost Song Settings edited and with an intro., by Myra Teicher Russel; James Joyce’s Chamber Music: Musical Settings, by G. Molyneux Palmer sung, by Robert White, accompanied, by Samuel Sanders; Picking Up Airs: Hearing the Music in Joyce’s Text, ed. Ruth H. Bauerle; Dubliners, by James Joyce, ed. Hans Walter Gabler [&] Walter Hettche; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, ed. Hans Walter Gabler, by Walter Hettche; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, ed. R. B. Kershner; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, ed. Seamus Deane; Ulysses, by James Joyce, ed. Jeri Johnson; Reflections on James Joyce: Stuart Gilbert’s Paris Journal, ed. Thomas F. Staley, by Randolph Lewis . See also reply, by Kees Tamboer [questioning the authority for saying Joyce had been with prostitutes prior to Nora’s ‘making a man’ of him] (May 12, 1994).
• 23 Sept. 1993: “The Heroism of Despair”, review of Selected Letters, by Henry Adams, ed. Ernest Samuels; Authority and Alliance in the Letters of Henry Adams, by Joanne Jacobson; The Correspondence of Henry James and Henry Adams 1877-1914, ed. George Monteiro, and Refinements of Love: A Novel about Clover and Henry Adams, by Sarah Booth Conroy.
• 24 June 1993: “Dream Work”, review of All the Pretty Horses: Vol. 1, The Border Trilogy, by Cormac McCarthy.
• 25 March 1993: “Bewitched, Bothered, & Bewildered”, review of Illustration, by J. Hillis Miller; Ariadne’s Thread: Story Lines, by J. Hillis Miller; The Critics Bear It Away: American Fiction and the Academy, by Frederick Crews; Double Agent: The Critic and Society, by Morris Dickstein; Thinking Across the American Grain: Ideology, Intellect, and the New Pragmatism, by Giles Gunn.
• 5 Nov. 1992: “Book of Books Books”, review of The World of Biblical Literature, by Robert Alter; Reading the Book: Making the Bible a Timeless Text, by Burton L. Visotzky; The Voice of Jacob: On the Composition of Genesis, by Leslie Brisman, and The Changes of Cain: Violence and the Lost Brother in Cain and Abel Literature, by Ricardo J. Quinones.
• 9 April 1992: “Mister Myth”, review of Words With Power: “Being a Second Study of ‘The Bible and Literature’ and The Double Vision: Language and Meaning in Religion both, by Northrop Frye, and Reading the World: Selected Writings, 1935-1976, by Frye, ed. Robert D. Denham; Myth and Metaphor: Selected Essays, 1974-1988, by Frye, ed. Denham.
• 15 Aug. 1991: “Critics at the Top”, review of Selected Writings 1950-1990, by Irving Howe; Minor Prophecies: “The Literary Essay in the Culture Wars, by Geoffrey H. Hartman; The Uses of Error, by Frank Kermode, and Versions of Pygmalion, by J. Hillis Miller. See also reply, by Howard M. Ziff [attributing first use of the phrase ’the middle style to Johnson, not Coleridge’ (October 10, 1991).
• 18 July 1991: “The Flight of Gerard Manley Hopkins”, review of Gerard Manley Hopkins: “A Very Private Life, by Robert Bernard Martin.
• 14 Feb. 1991: “The Poet of Modern Life”, review of Baudelaire, by Claude Pichois, trans. by Graham Robb; The Parisian Prowler: Le Spleen de Paris, Petits Poèmes en prose, by Charles Baudelaire, trans. by Edward K. Kaplan, and Baudelaire: Collected Essays, 1953-1988, by F.W. Leakey, ed. Eva Jacobs.
• 28 Sept. 1989: “Haggling Presences”, review of For Every Sin and The Immortal Bartfuss both, by Aharon Appelfeld and translated from the Hebrew, by Jeffrey M. Green; Five Seasons, by A.B. Yehoshua, Translated from the Hebrew, by Hillel Halkin; His Daughter, by Yoram Kaniuk, Translated from the Hebrew, by Seymour Simckes, and See Under: Love, by David Grossman, Translated from the Hebrew, by Betsy Rosenberg.
• June 29, 1989: “The Strange Case of Paul de Man”, review of Wartime Journalism: 1939-1943, by Paul de Man, ed. Werner Hamacher, by Neil Hertz, by Thomas Keenan ; Responses: On Paul de Man’s Wartime Journalism, ed. Werner Hamacher, ed. Neil Hertz, ed. Thomas Keenan; Critical Writings: 1953-1978, by Paul de Man, edited and with an intro., by Lindsay Waters; Reading de Man Reading, ed. Lindsay Waters, ed. Wlad Godzich. See also replies, by Daniel Bell (September 28, 1989) and Charles L. Griswold (October 12, 1989).
• 30 March 1989: “The Revel’s Ended”, review of Any Old Iron, by Anthony Burgess.
• 2 March 1989: “The Sad Captain of Criticism”, review of Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present, by Harold Bloom.
• 22 Dec. 1988: “The Poet in Limbo”, review of Conrad Aiken: “Poet of White Horse Vale, by Edward Butscher.
• 8 Dec. 1988: “Play It Again, Sam”, review of Waiting for Godot a play, by Samuel Beckett, directed, by Mike Nichols.
• 2 June 1988: “Pound’s Book of Beasts”, review of Pound as Wuz: Essays and Lectures on Ezra Pound, by James Laughlin; The Genealogy of Demons: Anti-Semitism, Fascism, and the Myths of Ezra Pound, by Robert Casillo; Stone Cottage: Pound, Yeats, and Modernism, by James Longenbach, and Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano, by John Tytell . See also replies, by Ivan Strand (November 10, 1988) and John Tytell (November 24, 1988).
• 3 March 1988: “Huston’s Joyce”, review of The Dead a film directed, by John Huston, based on the story, by James Joyce. See also replies, by James Collignon (April 28, 1988) and Gabriel Austin (May 12, 1988).
• 25 June 1987: “Whose Trope Is It Anyway?”, review of The Renewal of Literature: Emersonian Reflections, by Richard Poirier.
• 26 Feb. 1987: “The Luck of the Irish”, review of The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse, ed. Thomas Kinsella; The Faber Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry, ed. Paul Muldoon. See also reply, by Thomas Kinsella (September 24, 1987; text).
• 4 Dec. 1986: “She’s Got Rhythm”, review of The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore edited and with an intro., by Patricia C. Willis.
• 14 Aug. 1986: “The Young Yeats”, review of The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats Vol. I, 1865-1895, ed. John Kelly.
• 26 June 1986: “A Hero of Our Own Times”, review of A Man of Letters: Selected Essays, by V.S. Pritchett.
• 26 Sept. 1985: “American Sage”, review of Attitudes Toward History third edition, with a new afterword, by the author Kenneth Burke; Permanence and Change: “An Anatomy of Purpose third edition, with a new afterword, by the author Kenneth Burke.
• 19 July 1984: “The Return of the Native”, review of An American Procession, by Alfred Kazin.
• 8 Dec. 1983: “A Guide to the Revolution”, review of Literary Theory: “An intro., by Terry Eagleton.
• 21 Oct. 1982: “Wonder Woman”, review of A Bloodsmoor Romance, by Joyce Carol Oates.
• 29 April 1982: “Bright and Silly”, review of The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis, by Jeffrey Meyers, and Fables of Aggression: Wyndham Lewis, the Modernist as Fascist, by Fredric Jameson.
• 19 Nov. 1981: “The Real McCoy”, review of Essays on Realism, by Georg Lukács, ed. Rodney Livingstone, trans. by David Fernbach, and The Realistic Imagination: English Fiction from Frankenstein to Lady Chatterley, by George Levine.
• 22 Oct. 1981: “The Hunger Strikers [‘Everybody knows that ten men have starved themselves to death in the Maze Prison near Belfast in the past few months, but the reasons for those deaths are not universally understood.’]. See also reply, by John P. Harrington [affirming the futility of hunger strikes] (January 21, 1982).
• 14 May 1981: “Hide and Seek”, review of The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (The 1893 Text), by Walter Pater, ed. Donald L. Hill , and Walter Pater’s Art of Autobiography, by Gerald Monsman.
• 19 Feb. 1981: “Secret Sharer”, review of Ways of Escape, by Graham Greene. See also reply, by D. M. Davin (May 28, 1981).
• 20 Nov. 1980: “You Better Believe It”, review of The Middle Ground, by Margaret Drabble, and Setting the World on Fire, by Angus Wilson.
• 14 Aug. 1980: “New York Poets”, review of The Burning Mystery of Anna in 1951, by Kenneth Koch; The Morning of the Poem, by James Schuyler; Sunrise, by Frederick Seidel, and Trader, by Robert Mazzocco.
• 12 June 1980: “Deconstructing Deconstruction”, review of Deconstruction and Criticism, by Harold Bloom, by Paul de Man, by Jacques Derrida, by Geoffrey H. Hartman, by J. Hillis Miller, and Allegories of Reading: “Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust, by Paul de Man. See also replies, by Dorothea Tanning, Paul Alpers, Robert C. Solomon, and Denis Donoghue’s response to same (December 4, 1980).
• January 24, 1980: “Sign Language”, review of As We Know, by John Ashbery. See also reply, by Maureen Bloomfield (April 3, 1980).
• September 27, 1979: “The Heart in Hiding”, review of Gerard Manley Hopkins: “A Biography, by Paddy Kitchen.
• June 14, 1979: “The Stains of Ireland”, review of The Year of the French, by Thomas Flanagan.
• February 22, 1979: “From the Country of the Blue”, review of The Poems of George Meredith, ed. Phyllis B. Bartlett.
• June 1, 1978: “Five Hundred Years of the King’s English”, review of The Oxford University Press and the Spread of Learning: “An Illustrated History, by Nicolas Barker; A History of the Oxford University Press Vol. I: To the Year 1780, by Harry Carter; The Oxford University Press: An Informal History, by Peter Sutcliffe; Caught in the Web of Words: “James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary, by K. M. Elisabeth Murray, and The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450-1800, by Lucien Febvre [&] Henri-Jean Martin, trans. by David Gerard.
• December 8, 1977: “Only Disconnect”, review of Daniel Martin, by John Fowles, and The Sun and the Moon, by Niccolò Tucci.
• September 15, 1977: “Stevens at the Crossing”, review of Wallace Stevens: “The Poems of Our Climate, by Harold Bloom.
• May 26, 1977: “The Hard Case of Yeats”, review of Yeats, by Frank Tuohy; Maud Gonne, by Samuel Levenson; W. B. Yeats and the Idea of a Theatre, by James W. Flannery, and The Cuchulain Plays of W.B. Yeats, by Reg Skene. See also Robert Lowell (July 14, 1977; infra).
• March 3, 1977: “The Snow Man”, review of Souvenirs and Prophecies: The Young Wallace Stevens, by Holly Stevens.
• October 14, 1976: “Drums Under the Window”, review of The Damnable Question, by George Dangerfield, and Mother Ireland, by Edna O’Brien.
• October 18, 1973: “A Pleasing Discovery” [Letter; additional note to “Good Grief”].
• July 19, 1973: “Good Grief”, review of Epistle to a Godson, and Other Poems, by W.H. Auden; Forewords and Afterwords, by W.H. Auden, selected, by Edward Mendelson; Man’s Place: An Essay on Auden, by Richard Johnson, and W.H. Auden as a Social Poet, by Frederick Buell.
• April 19, 1973: “Darling, They’re Quoting Our Poem”, review of The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature: Vol. 4, 1900-1950, ed. I. R. Willison; The New Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1950 chosen and, ed. Helen Gardner, and The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse chosen, by Philip Larkin.
• December 2, 1971: “Life Sentence”, review of Meet Me in the Green Glen, by Robert Penn Warren; The Condor Passes, by Shirley Ann Grau; Edsel, by Karl Shapiro.
• May 6, 1971: “Waiting for the End”, review of The Gulf, by Derek Walcott; The Carrier of Ladders, by W.S. Merwin; Darker, by Mark Strand; The Country of a Thousand Years of Peace, by James Merrill; The Whispering Roots and Other Poems, by C. Day-Lewis; Collecting Evidence, by Hugh Seidman, and Baby Breakdown, by Anne Waldman.
• November 5, 1970: “Ghosts and Others”, review of Adam and the Train: Two Novels, by Heinrich Böll; Whitewater, by Paul Horgan; The Dick, by Bruce Jay Friedman, and The Ghost of Henry James, by David Plante.
• June 18, 1970: “Language Barriers”, review of The Best and the Last of Edwin O’Connor edited with an intro., by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and with contributions, by Edmund Wilson [&] John V. Kelleher, and Max Jamison, by Wilfrid Sheed.
• May 7, 1970:Oasis Poetry”, review of Derivations, by Robert Duncan; Shall We Gather at the River, by James Wright; Collected Poems, by Alan Dugan; Leaflets, by Adrienne Rich, and The Naomi Poems: Corpse and Beans, by Saint Geraud.
• March 12, 1970: “The Uncompleted Dossier”, review of Travels with My Aunt, by Graham Greene, and Blind Love, and Other Stories, by V. S. Pritchett.
• December 4, 1969: “Confidence Men”, review of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, by R.E. Raspe, illustrated, by Ronald Searle, intro., by S.J. Perelman; Selected Writings of E. T. A. Hoffmann, ed. & trans. by Elizabeth C. Knight [&] Leonard J. Kent, illustrated, by Jacob Landau.
• October 9, 1969: “Cummings and Goings”, review of Selected Letters of E. E. Cummings, ed. F.W. Dupee [&] George Stade.
• July 10, 1969: “Couples”, review of Going Places, by Leonard Michaels; Mirrors, by Lucy Warner; What I’m Going to Do, I Think, by L. Woiwode, and A Nest of Ninnies, by John Ashbery, by James Schuyler.
• June 19, 1969: “Worldling”, review of Secondary Worlds, by W.H. Auden; Collected Longer Poems, by W.H. Auden; Letters From Iceland, by Auden & Louis MacNeice; Völuspá: The Song of the Sybil trans. by Paul B. Taylor & Auden; Quest for the Necessary: “W. H. Auden and the Dilemma of Divided Consciousness, by Herbert Greenberg, and Auden’s Poetry, by Justin Replogle.
• May 22, 1969: “Second Thoughts”, review of The World’s Body, by John Crowe Ransom; John Crowe Ransom: Critical Essays and a Bibliography, ed. Thomas Daniel Young; Essays of Four Decades, by Allen Tate; The Fugitive Group: A Literary History, by Louise Cowan, and The Burden of Time: The Fugitives and Agrarians, by John L. Stewart. See also reply, by Harriet Doar [defending W. J. Cash against charge of condescension] (October 9, 1969).
• February 13, 1969: “Parts of Speech”, review of The Counterfeiters, by Hugh Kenner; The Literature of Silence, by Ihab Hassan, and Yeats’s Blessings on Von Hügel, by Martin Green.
• January 16, 1969: “A Very Special Case”, review of Jonathan Swift, A Critical Biography, by John Middleton Murry; Swift, The Man, His Works, and the Age. Vol. Two: Dr. Swift, by Irvin Ehrenpreis; Jonathan Swift, by Nigel Dennis; Protean Shape: “A Study in 18th. Century Vocabulary and Usage, by Susie I. Tucker.
• July 11, 1968: “Enigma Variations”, review of Collected Poems 1915-1967; The Complete White Oxen, by Kenneth Burke; Language as Symbolic Action; Towards a Better Life [2nd. edn.]; Counterstatement [2nd edn.], and The Philosophy of Literary Form, all by Kenneth Burke.
• June 6, 1968: “Objects Solitary and Terrible”, review of Live or Die, by Anne Sexton; The Lice, by W.S. Merwin; Reasons for Moving, by Mark Strand, and Love Letters from Asia, by Sandra Hochman.
• April 25, 1968: “That Old Eloquence”, review of Not This Pig, by Philip Levine; A 1-12, by Louis Zukofsky, and After Experience, by W.D. Snodgrass, February 29, 1968: “The Black Ox”, review of Forms of Discovery, by Yvor Winters; and see also Donoghue's additional note [an error in Dublin pirated edn.] (28 March 1968).
• February 1, 1968: “Fabulous Salad”, review of Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium, by Robert Buttel, and Wallace Stevens: “Musing the Obscure, by Ronald Sukenick.
• December 21, 1967: “The Other Country”, review of The Golden Key, by George MacDonald, illustrated, by Maurice Sendak, Afterword, by W.H. Auden. See also reply, by Andrew Blasky [correcting a reference to Lilith] (April 11, 1968).
• December 7, 1967: “The Ordinary Universe”, review of The Pyramid, by William Golding; William Golding: “A Critical Study, by Mark Kinkead-Weekes, by Ian Gregor; The Art of William Golding, by Bernard S. Oldsey & Stanley Weintraub, and Imaginary Friends, by Alison Lurie.
• November 9, 1967: “Moidores for Hart Crane”, review of The Poetry of Hart Crane, by R. W. B. Lewis.
• September 28, 1967: “Sweepstakes”, review of Why Are We In Vietnam?, by Norman Mailer; Death Kit, by Susan Sontag, and The Puzzleheaded Girl, by Christina Stead.
• August 24, 1967: “What’s Your Inner Reality?”, review of The Eighth Day, by Thornton Wilder, and Snow White, by Donald Barthelme.
• August 3, 1967: “Absolute Pitch”, review of Nabokov: “His Life in Art: A Critical Narrative, by Andrew Field.
• June 15, 1967: “Man Without Art”, review of Death on the Installment Plan, by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, trans. by Ralph Manheim, and Céline and His Vision, by Erika Ostrovsky.
• May 4, 1967: “Svevo’s Comedy”, review of Short Sentimental Journey, and Other Stories, by Italo Svevo, trans. by Beryl de Zoete, L. Collison-Morley [&] Ben Johnson, and Italo Svevo: “The Man and the Writer, by P.N. Furbank.
• April 6, 1967: “The Politics of Poetry”, review of W. B. Yeats and Georgian Ireland, by Donald T. Torchiana, and The Letters of John Gay, ed. C.F. Burgess.
• March 9, 1967: “Balloons”, review of Nil: “Episodes in the Literary Conquest of Void during the Nineteenth Century, by Robert Martin Adams; A World Elsewhere: “The Place of Style in American Literature, by Richard Poirier, and In the Human Grain: “Technological Culture and Its Effect on Man, Literature and Religion, by Walter J. Ong, by S.J..
• January 12, 1967: “Moorish Gorgeousness”, review of Tell Me, Tell Me, by Marianne Moore.
• December 1, 1966: “Wallace Stevens, Imperator”, review of The Letters of Wallace Stevens, ed. Holly Stevens.
• November 17, 1966: “Magic Defeated”, review of The Time of the Angels, by Iris Murdoch; The Birds Fall Down, by Rebecca West, and The Animal Hotel, by Jean Garrigue.
• October 20, 1966: “Miracle Plays”, review of Miracles, ed. Richard Lewis; Bertha, and Other Plays, by Kenneth Koch; Reasons of the Heart, by Edward Dahlberg, and Cipango’s Hinder Door, by Edward Dahlberg.
• September 22, 1966: “Aboriginal Poet”, review of Collected Poems, by Theodore Roethke; Theodore Roethke: An Introduction to the Poetry, by Karl Malkoff.
• August 18, 1966: “Grand Old Opry”, review of Giles Goat-Boy, by John Barth.
• July 28, 1966: “Moravia’s Vulgarity”, review of Man as an End, by Alberto Moravia, trans. by Bernard Wall, and The Lie, by Alberto Moravia, trans. by Angus Davidson.
• June 9, 1966: “Experiments in Folly”, review of The Doctor Is Sick, by Anthony Burgess; The Secret Swinger, by Alan Harrington, and A Season in the Life of Emmanuel, by Marie-Claire Blais, trans. by Derek Coltman, intro., by Edmund Wilson.
• May 26, 1966: “Musil”, review of Five Women, by Robert Musil, trans. by Eithne Wilkins, trans. by Ernst Kaiser.
• April 28, 1966: “A Good-Natured Man”, review of Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, ed. Arthur Friedman.
• April 14, 1966: “The Long Poem”, review of Wildtrack, by John Wain; Rivers and Mountains, by John Ashbery; The War of the Secret Agents, and Other Poems, by Henri Coulette, and Nights and Days, by James Merrill.
• March 3, 1966: “Ultra Writer”, review of Selected Letters of Malcolm Lowry, ed. Harvey Breit, ed. Margerie Bonner Lowry, and Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry, Reissued with an intro., by Stephen Spender.
• February 3, 1966: “Man of Letters”, review of Collected Letters: “Vol. I (1874-1897), by Bernard Shaw, ed. Dan H. Laurence; The Unrepentant Pilgrim: “A Study of the Development of Bernard Shaw, by J. Percy Smith, and G. B. Shaw: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. R. J. Kaufmann.
• December 9, 1965: “Blues for Mr. Baldwin”, review of Going to Meet the Man, by James Baldwin.
• November 11, 1965: “Reconsidering Katherine Anne Porter”, review of Collected Stories, by Katherine Anne Porter.
• October 14, 1965: “Dry Dreams”, review of Letters to Anais Nin; Plexus; Sexus; Nexus; The World of Sex and Quiet Days in Clichy, all by Henry Miller, and Henry Miller on Writing, ed. Thomas H. Moore.
• [...]
• April 7, 2016: “Reconsidering Katherine Anne Porter”, Review of Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923, by R. F. Foster - available online; accessed 31 March 2016.]

To the Editors: “"Hence, as Robert Lowell has asserted, Yeats couldn’t see anything" (NYR, May 26). / Why should one blind man say this about another? I suppose such a patronizing phrase might slip from one’s tongue in conversation or in an interview. However Denis Donoghue has a gift for isolating, slanting, and distorting when he paraphrases-often to make an unfair point, strangled in a web of qualification. In a short poem of mine called “Truth,” I have a half fictitious British poet, hostile to Yeats, say, “He had bad eyes, saw nothing.” Dare I say in this place that Yeats saw beyond the reviewer? Robert Lowell / New York City.

Mr. Lowell is intemperate. His courtesy, like his tongue, has slipped. The theme was not, of course, Yeats’s eyesight but his mind-sight; not a question of 20/20 eyesight, the nature of his retina, or the trouble he gave his oculist. I was talking about a certain tradition in Yeatsian criticism which ascribes to Yeats the habit of imagination which sees each object “only for the sake of what it answers to in him, not for what it is in itself.” I quote from Donald Davie’s Ezra Pound: “Poet as Sculptor, the most explicit version of that tradition, lest it be thought that I am isolating, slanting, and distorting. As for Mr. Lowell’s part in this tradition, it would be tedious and exorbitant to track down the source of my evidence, whether it is in a poem, an essay, or one of those conversations or interviews in which Mr. Lowell’s tongue slipped. The question can be cleared up at once: “if Mr. Lowell wished to dissociate himself from the notion of Yeats as an excessively symbolizing poet - and this is the gist of the tradition from Pound to Davie - I am surprised that he has not taken the present opportunity to do so.