Essays & Criticism

The best poetry of 2024, in The New York Times

The Essay as Realm” in The Georgia Review

On clouds in poetry and art, in The New York Times

Fear as a Game” in The Believer

Five favorite books about books, in The Atlantic

Second Selves” in The Paris Review

On “the speaker” in poetry, in The New York Times

On keeping a reading list, in The Washington Post

The best poetry of 2023, in The New York Times

On two books by Terrance Hayes, in The New York Times

On short poems, in The New York Times

On self-pity, in POETRY

On beginnings, in The New York Times

A Place for Fire” in the Paris Review

The Best Poetry of 2022, in the New York Times

On Jorie Graham, in the New York Times

On Beginner’s Luck” in Lit Hub

Why Write?” in The Paris Review

Dream House” in Epoch

The Shape of the Void: Toward a Definition of Poetry” in The New York Times

A Poem (and a Painting) About the Suffering That Hides in Plain Sight” (on Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts”) in The New York Times

The Lyric Decision: How Poets Figure Out What Comes Next” in The New York Times

The Leap” in Grand Journal

A Field Guide to Productivity Apps” in The Believer

On Louise Glück in The New York Times

Seeing and Being Are Not the Same” (introduction to The Voyage Out) in the Paris Review Daily

On June Jordan and Muriel Rukeyser in The New York Times

A Complicating Energy: Notes on a Year Without Strangers” in Harper’s

On punctuation in poetry in The New York Times

The Year in Self-Googling” in Hazlitt

The Intolerable, I Guess” (Poetry Foundation)

Safe” in The Yale Review

Poems from the Storm: On Climate Poetry” in the New York Review of Books

Hoarding Instincts” in Real Life

Nostalgia for a Less Innocent Time: On the Glory and Depravity of Hair Metal” in the Paris Review Daily

The Uncanny Child” in the Paris Review Daily

Proust and the Joy of Suffering” in the Paris Review Daily

The Stupid Classics Book Club” in the Paris Review Daily

On Classic Party Fiction” in the Paris Review Daily

Weird Time in Frankenstein” in the Paris Review Daily

“Against Completism” in the Paris Review Daily

“On Writerly Jealousy” in the Paris Review Daily

The Great Mortality” in Real Life

Letter of Recommendation: Recently Returned Books” in the New York Times Magazine

“Is compassion fatigue inevitable in an age of 24-hour news?” in The Guardian Long Read (also available as a podcast)

“Big & Slow” in Real Life

Crash Course” in the New York Times Magazine

“Doomsday Pattern” in Real Life 

“True Crime” in Real Life

“On the Pleasures of Front Matter” in the Paris Review Daily

“In Our Midst” in Real Life

“Picture Yourself Happy” in Real Life

“The Little Room, or the Unreality of Memory” in Pacific Standard

“Earth Is Not Vengeful, Just Indifferent” in Pacific Standard

“NASA’s Overlooked Duty to Look Inward” in the New Yorker

“Magnificent Desolation” in Real Life

“Vanity Project” in Real Life

“Can Ideas Withstand Shifts in Language?” in Guernica

“Personal Data: Notes on Keeping a Notebook” in Catapult

“Variations on Crying” in The Butter

“Dream Logic” in The Butter