Essays
- Adrienne Rich and an Assessment of Contemporary American Poetry Spring 2012
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Even measured against the hyperbole of her obituaries, which are less about the quality and resonance of her poetry and more about the ideologies of her admirers, it is possible to assess the public value of contemporary American poetry in the context of Adrienne Rich’s words.
- Herrick and Donne and the Problems of Modernist Poetics Fall 2011
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Signorelli looks at past critiques of the metaphysical poets to suggest the problematic nature of modernist poetry. Do poets like Eliot and Wilbur give delight, or are they masters of frigidity?
- Fortunate Friendships Fall 2011
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In this excerpt from his new memoir, The Man in the Middle, Tim Goeglein discusses the profound influence on his life of the thought and friendship of Russell Kirk.
- Santayana’s Standing Fall 2011
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In this response to David Dilworth's review of his edition of two books by Santayana, James Seaton argues that Santayana was attacking the self-contradictions of the political correctness of his day.
- Peter J. Stanlis (1920–2011) Summer 2011
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Farewell to a great friend, Burke scholar, and one of the most influential American men of letters in the twentieth century.
- Otto von Habsburg (20 November 1912–4 July 2011) Summer 2011
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A eulogy for one of the great defenders of Christian Europe. May he rest in peace.
- Poetry and the Common Language Spring 2011
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Signorelli argues that contemporary poetry's quest for natural, colloquial expression is fundamentally misdirected. Poetry truly is an "artificial" mode of narrative expression, which is necessary to rise above the debased rhetoric of the modern age. We do not stand in need of a return to nature; we need a return to art.
- Newman’s ‘Idea’ and the Crisis of the Secular University Spring 2011
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Craig Bernthal of California State University, Fresno, looks candidly at the current state of university education in light of John Henry Newman's enduring work, The Idea of the University. As Newman well knew, education has its own built in set of laws. The consequences for evading these laws may not long be avoided.
- The Public Responsibilities of Known American Poets Winter 2011
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In this original essay, Gene Schlanger, the Wall Street Poet, reflects on the potential good of poetry in an age when the known poets cannot attract an audience or attention.
- Conservatism in Germany Volume 47, Number 3–4 (Fall 2010)
- The Story of Carlton Hayes Volume 47, Number 1 (Winter 2010)
- A Foreign Policy for (Probably Not Very Many) Americans Volume 46, Number 4 (Winter 2008)
- ‘And Therefore as Stranger Give It Welcome’ Volume 46, Number 4 (Winter 2008)
- The Sword of Education Volume 46, Number 4 (Winter 2008)
- From Tradition to ‘Values Conservatism’ Volume 46, Number 4 (Winter 2008)
- The Many Roots of American Order Volume 46, Number 4 (Winter 2008)
- Lost Causes and Gained Causes Volume 46, Number 4 (Winter 2008)
- Stealing Dorothy Volume 46, Number 3 (Fall 2008)
- The ‘Time’ of Elizabeth Madox Roberts Volume 46, Number 3 (Fall 2008)
- Robert Traver: Anatomy of a Fisherman Volume 46, Number 3 (Fall 2008)
- On Brooklyn’s Side Volume 46, Number 3 (Fall 2008)
- What About Booth? Volume 46, Number 3 (Fall 2008)
- The Conservative Exiles’ Reading List Website Exclusives (2007–2008)
- In Memoriam: Richard Durant Volume 46, Number 2 (Summer 2008)
- The Non-Human World of China Miéville Volume 46, Number 2 (Summer 2008)
- The Witness Revisited Volume 46, Number 1 (Spring 2008)
- Sketches of Painterly Lives Volume 46, Number 1 (Spring 2008)
- From the Nightstand of a Bookman . . . Volume 46, Number 1 (Spring 2008)
- The State of Biography Volume 46, Number 1 (Spring 2008)
- A Tribute to Jacques Barzun on His Centennial Volume 45, Number 3 (Fall 2007)
- Red Mist Volume 45, Number 1 (Winter 2007)
- Ernest van den Haag (1914–2002) Volume 43, Number 1 (Fall 2003)
- Letter from Italy Volume 44, Number 3 (Summer 2006)
- The Splendor of Dedication Volume 34, Number 2 (Fall 1994)
Mere unthinking negative opposition to
the current of events, clutching in despair at what we still
retain, will not suffice in this age. A conservatism of instinct
must be reinforced by a conservatism of thought and imagination.
Russell Kirk
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News
The Kirk Center and The University Bookman regret the passing of sociologist Irving Louis Horowitz, who died in March. Recipient of many accolades, Horowitz was a sociologist of wide-ranging interests, from religion to analysis of state power and social order in assessing a society’s quality of life, an approach that has since become standard.
Horowitz has a special place in the memory of the Kirk Center. It is he who made possible the Library of Conservative Thought, a collection of more than thirty volumes published by Transaction Press, with which Horowitz was long affiliated, and edited by Russell Kirk. These thirty-odd volumes constitute a basic reading list for the educated conservative, and include classics such as James Burnham’s Congress and the American Tradition, Irving Babbitt’s Rousseau and Romanticism, Orestes Brownson’s Selected Political Essays, and Kirk’s own America’s British Culture. These books brought the tradition of conservative reflection to a new generation, and rightly placed them alongside other important works of sociology, intellectual history, and politics.
In his eulogy for Russell Kirk, given at Kirk’s Memorial Mass in 1994, Horowitz stated that Kirk was now “at one with the great tradition he helped articulate and recover”—words that also aptly describe the legacy of Irving Louis Horowitz.
RIP. (17 Apr 2012)
Here’s a round-up of recent writings by Bookman editor Gerald Russello elsewhere on the Internet and in print. • At the Imaginative Conservative Russello responds to Claes Ryn’s argument that conservatives have failed the culture. • He reviews Gregory Wolfe’s Beauty Will Save the World in the October edition of Chronicles. • At the National Catholic Register he discusses a recent Colorado religious liberty case denying families access to funds for private education, based on an outdated reading of a bigoted “Blaine”-style amendment. • In The Wilson Quarterly, he reviews Why Trilling Matters.
(15 Oct 2011)
The Imaginative Conservative blog has posted an excerpt and link to an essay by Pepperdine’s Ted McAllister on Kirk’s Conservative Mind that is worth a look: “What was then more readily an act of preservation has become today an act of recovery.”
(1 Oct 2011)
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