Jeff Dolven

Nov 19, 2024 | sevenstories.com | Ryan Ruby |Don Mee Choi |Jeff Dolven

Literary critic Ryan Ruby uncovers the secret history of poetry in a mock-academic verse essay filled with wit and wisdom. Prophet. Entertainer. Courtier. Criminal. Revolutionary. Critic. Scholar. Nobody. Epic in sweep, Context Collapse is the secret history of the poet—from Bronze Age Greece and Renaissance Italy to the cafés of Grub Street and the Latin Quarter, from the creative writing departments of the American Midwest to the boardrooms of Silicon Valley.

Sep 13, 2023 | cabinetmagazine.org | Jeff Dolven

Skip navigation Jeff DolvenConsider how you hold a piece of chalk. Not by the handle: it doesn’t have one. Or, if it does, that handle is of the chalk’s own substance, flesh of its flesh, distinguishable only because it is the bit left in your hand when you can’t write anymore. A useless nub, or stub, or butt.

May 10, 2023 | yalereview.org | Jeff Dolven

Want to become a psychoanalyst? You’ll have to undergo analysis,and if there are no analysts aroundfor miles, or if, like Freud was, you’re the first,you’ll simply have to analyze yourself. Now: just how widely should this law apply? With teachers, the question mostly won’t arise. They’ve all been taught. With parents, we hope, ditto. Your pilot probably took a plane as a child. The con man got his start by being conned. Doctors, of course. And transplant surgeons?

Feb 3, 2023 | press.uchicago.edu | Jeff Dolven

Poetry before Interpretation In an age of interpretation, style eludes criticism. Yet it does so much tacit work: telling time, telling us apart, telling us who we are. What does style have to do with form, history, meaning, our moment’s favored categories? What do we miss when we look right through it? Senses of Style essays an answer.