Did you know that the Oxford University Press (USA) has a blog? I didn’t either until, by a circuitous path involving a professor of Civil War history who also writes for it, I ran across this discussion of our nation’s new Poet Laureate. I am the last person on earth qualified to discuss poetry (being convinced that the art, in English at least, peaked with Robert Service and Rudyard Kipling) but this guy looks good. Keep in mind that the title is awarded by the Library of Congress and not the current administration. Here’s a sample:

The Impossible Marriage

The bride disappears. After twenty minutes of searching
we discover her in the cellar, vanishing against a pillar
in her white gown and her skin’s original pallor.
When we guide her back to the altar, we find the groom
in his slouch hat, open shirt, and untended beard
withdrawn to the belltower with the healthy young sexton
from whose comradeship we detach him with difficulty.
Oh, never in all the cathedrals and academies
of compulsory Democracy and free-thinking Calvinism
will these poets marry! — O pale, passionate
anchoret of Amherst! O reticent kosmos of Brooklyn!

1983

Some other interesting stuff at this blog which makes me wish I had again the budget I formerly had to buy from university presses. Oh, and their blogroll ranges from Crooked Timber to Leah’s buddy Michael Berube. And any blogroll that includes the name Blog of a Bookslut has got to be worth reading.