I think it’s important not to be tone deaf about the current cultural climate. But I think there’s a difference between being tone deaf and playing a tune that people want to hear as a way of courting public approval.

The answer to the “Negro question” is a mix of sermon and jeremiad, calling attention to the gap between a desired moral universe and disastrous present reality.

Despite some dapper pretension, there is a basic ridiculousness in "the person of letters" making the rounds on a game show, which, in theory, ought to be a real dignity-leech. Most of these authors seem amused to be on television, as if they can't believe that a network executive signed off on such a thing.

Please take a moment to consider and appreciate how the Department of Motor Vehicles has influenced contemporary poetry.

People complain about the city. There is never not something to complain about. The sidewalks fill with leaves — red and gold — and these critics still complain. Some people complain and never say goodbye but, sometimes, a complainer vacates.

A book can change a life, even save one. That’s what a book did for Mitchell S. Jackson and now he has written a memoir with that same aspiration: Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family.