A poem on the foolishness that passes for wisdom these days.

From Clint Eastwood's A Fistful of Dollars to Mel Gibson's Payback to Liam Neeson's Taken to Russell Crowe's Gladiator, anger and vengeance are often explored and displayed in cinema.

Small-town saints challenge us to rethink our approach to success.

A poem on the necessity of silence in this world of noise.

Shia LaBeouf, who plays the famous saint in Abel Ferrara's Padre Pio, conveys a real reverence and an inspiring love, but cannot redeem questionable choices.

Prose is not poetry, yet it has its own rhythms; and the writer's meaning—conveyed not in bare words alone but in emphases, inflections, punctuations—can be clarified by speaking and hearing it as well as by seeing it. But reading well aloud takes practice.

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, an armistice was signed to signify the end of the First World War.

The so-called Respect for Marriage Act has pushed the issue of gay marriage back into the spotlight and, with it, the slogan "The right side of history."

As a literary critic, writer, and professor, I have the great privilege of working with literature every day, and helping others to encounter the beauty of great stories as well.

The literary critic and biographer Mona Wilson once began an introduction to a selection of Samuel Johnson's prose and poetry with a memorable disclaimer. "I shall say nothing of Johnson's life."