Helen Vendler, one of the leading poetry critics in the United States, with a reputation-making power that derived from her fine-grained, impassioned readings, expressed in crystalline prose in The New Yorker and other publications, died on Tuesday at her home in Laguna Niguel, Calif. She was 90. The cause was cancer, said her son, David […]
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Sometime in the late 18th century, a sign appeared outside a shambly butcher’s hut in the English town of Stratford-upon-Avon: “The Immortal Shakspeare was born in this house,” it announced, using a then common spelling of his name. Devotees began making pilgrimages — dropping to their knees, weeping, singing odes: “Untouched and sacred be thy […]
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Fans of Taylor Swift often study up for a new album, revisiting the singer’s older works to prepare to analyze lyrics and song titles for secret messages and meanings. “The Tortured Poets Department” is getting much the same treatment, and perhaps no group of listeners was better prepared than the students at Harvard University currently […]
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When Taylor Swift released “The Tortured Poets Department,” on Friday at midnight, her fan base quickly got to work decoding the album, looking for layers of meaning and insight into Ms. Swift’s life. Of course, that includes the pop singer’s romantic history. Like many of her past works, the songs on this album — which […]
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Peter Sellars wanted to know more. He was in San Francisco a few years ago, attending a performance of “The No One’s Rose,” a fascinatingly idiosyncratic work of music theater that featured some of his favorite artists, from the American Modern Opera Company, and a score by the young composer Matthew Aucoin. One section of […]
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When Taylor Swift announced the title of her next album during an acceptance speech at the Grammy Awards in February, she spurred a reaction from a typically quiet bunch: the poets. The album, slated to come out this week, she said, is called “The Tortured Poets Department.” (Sans apostrophe.) As the name caught fire on […]
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Read Your Way Around the World is a series exploring the globe through books. Accra is rich with stories, some of them only a few words long — Still Hustling; Work Hard and Dream Big; Short Ways Are Dangerous — and written in bold letters on the rear windows of tro tros, the ubiquitous minibuses […]
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