Adam Kirsch

The Greatest English Poet You Haven't Heard of

The wisdom of a poet in nature and in war

“We are at the beginning of another ‘Georgian period,’ which may take rank in due time with the several great poetic ages of the past,” wrote Edward Marsh in 1912. And for a brief moment, such confidence seemed plausible. READ MORE >>

The Other Anne Frank

An important, new Auschwitz survivor's diary

In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt writes movingly about the Nazis' failed attempt to plunge the entire Holocaust into silence. The Nazis thought they could exterminate the Jews so totally that not a single voice would remain to describe what had happened. READ MORE >>

The New Essayists, or the Decline of a Form?

The essay as reality television

“The essay, as a literary form, is pretty well extinct,” Philip Larkin wrote gloomily in 1984. Extinct was the right word, capturing the sense of an organism that could no longer survive in a changed environment. READ MORE >>

Art Over Biology

Before 2013 begins, catch up on the best of 2012. From now until the New Year, we will be re-posting some of The New Republic’s most thought-provoking pieces of the year. Enjoy. Why Lyrics Last: Evolution, Cognition, and Shakespeare’s Sonnets By Brian Boyd (Harvard University Press, 227 pp., $25.95) Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind By Mark Pagel (W.W. Norton, 416 pp., $29.95) READ MORE >>

Pages

SHARE HIGHLIGHT

0 CHARACTERS SELECTED

TWEET THIS

POST TO TUMBLR