Patrick Kurp is a writer living in Houston, and the author of the literary blog Anecdotal Evidence.
CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLES
Complex, Simple: On Robert Conquest’s “Collected Poems”
Patrick Kurp admires the “Collected Poems” of the renowned historian Robert Conquest, whose verse “ranges from the ribald to the wittily rarefied.”...
A Set of Vicious Russian Nesting Dolls: On Varlam Shalamov’s “Sketches of the Criminal World: Further Kolyma Stories”
Patrick Kurp reads and rereads “Sketches of the Criminal World,” the second volume of Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma stories translated by Donald Rayfield....
“Cheering as the Summer Weather”: On the Primal Appeal of Light Verse
Patrick Kurp sings the praises of light verse, from Ogden Nash to the present day....
His Own “Final Thing”: On Varlam Shalamov’s “Kolyma Stories”
Patrick Kurp on the artfully rendered accounts of suffering in “Kolyma Stories” by Varlam Shalamov, translated by Donald Rayfield....
“The Dramatis Personae of Our Lives”: On “A Bountiful Harvest: The Correspondence of Anthony Hecht and William L. MacDonald”
Patrick Kurp explores “A Bountiful Harvest: The Correspondence of Anthony Hecht and William L. MacDonald,” edited by Philip Hoy....
Outside It Is Already Winter: Two New Books on Stalinist Terror
Patrick Kurp on “The Day Will Pass Away: The Diary of a Gulag Prison Guard: 1935-1936” and “Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial.”...
“The Exceptional Man”: Rereading Richard Wilbur
Patrick Kurp revisits the poems of Richard Wilbur, who passed away on October 14 at age 96....
A Negative Freedom: Thirteen Poets on Formal Verse
Patrick Kurp takes the measure of “Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets,” edited by William Baer....
“That Little Sob in the Spine”: Vladimir Nabokov in Conversation
Patrick Kurp listens in to “Conversations with Vladimir Nabokov,” edited by Robert Golla....
“A Sweetness in This Sense”: On X. J. Kennedy’s “That Swing: Poems, 2008–2016”
Patrick Kurp finds sweetness in “That Swing: Poems, 2008–2016” by X. J. Kennedy....
“Literature with a Capital L”: On Arthur Krystal’s “This Thing We Call Literature”
Patrick Kurp appreciates the serious “sallies” of “This Thing We Call Literature” by Arthur Krystal....
