Patrick Kurp

Patrick Kurp is a writer living in Houston, and the author of the literary blog Anecdotal Evidence.

Articles

To Draw the Mortal Hours: On James Matthew Wilson’s “The Strangeness of the Good”
Patrick Kurp appreciates the humility and plain speech of James Matthew Wilson’s poetic chronicle of the pandemic in “The Strangeness of the Good.”
Patrick KurpDec 25, 2022
- Poetry
Mirror-Man: On Aaron Poochigian’s Translation of Baudelaire
Patrick Kurp finds a “stylized, vigorous, clear” Baudelaire in Aaron Poochigian’s translation of “The Flowers of Evil.”
Patrick KurpApr 6, 2022
- Poetry
“My Soul Demanded It”: On Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s “Between Two Millstones”
Patrick Kurp reads “Between Two Millstones, Book 2: Exile in America, 1978-1994,” a memoir by the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Patrick KurpJun 25, 2021
- Memoir & Essay
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.”
Patrick KurpOct 11, 2020
- Poetry
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.
Patrick KurpApr 20, 2020
- Around the World
- Fiction
“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.
Patrick KurpMar 25, 2019
- Poetry
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.
Patrick KurpOct 29, 2018
- Around the World
- Fiction
“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.
Patrick KurpMay 20, 2018
- Biography & Autobiography
- Poetry
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.”
Patrick KurpFeb 21, 2018
“The Exceptional Man”: Rereading Richard Wilbur
Patrick Kurp revisits the poems of Richard Wilbur, who passed away on October 14 at age 96.
Patrick KurpNov 12, 2017
- Poetry
A Negative Freedom: Thirteen Poets on Formal Verse
Patrick Kurp takes the measure of “Thirteen on Form: Conversations with Poets,” edited by William Baer.
Patrick KurpOct 26, 2017
- Poetry
“That Little Sob in the Spine”: Vladimir Nabokov in Conversation
Patrick Kurp listens in to “Conversations with Vladimir Nabokov,” edited by Robert Golla.
Patrick KurpAug 31, 2017
- Fiction
“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.
Patrick KurpMay 29, 2017
- Poetry
“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.
Patrick KurpApr 22, 2017
- Literary Criticism
- Memoir & Essay