Catherine Eisner

When is a metrical makeweight ever acceptable to a poet? Padding? Never! Tennyson’s Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white , for ex...

Definition:   Dramatic Irony . A plot device in which apprehension of events or motives is the god-like privilege of the audience but not...

It was a Friday of a famous landslide election victory, I remember, and the clamour of doltish triumphalism in our street continued to oppre...

Let me declare at once that I claim first dibs on the title, The Audit of Fame , as it may be found set in stone on page 313 of my Sister M...

August 1  1914                           For those who would a war declare
                              we flung our hats up in the ...

In the collected works of Anton Chekhov  the short story, Imeniny ( The Name-Day Party ), is often singled out as a remarkably faithful por...