Michael Robbins

Every book lover should know John Crowley. Get to it already. He’s waited long enough.

December 19, 2019 at 8:00 a.m.

NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2019: Through the end of the year, the Chicago Tribune is revisiting books worthy of further recognition. This has been a banner year for John Crowley fans...

Poet Michael Robbins offers picks for best poetry collections of 2018

May 9, 2019 at 11:55 p.m.

“Somewhere in america/ the prison bus is running on time,” writes Tongo Eisen-Martin in “Heaven Is All Goodbyes” (City Lights, $15.95), the poetry collection I turned to most in 2018....

Literary fiction or genre? When Megan Abbott and Naomi Novik are writing, who cares.

May 9, 2019 at 11:52 p.m.

If there’s a distinction between “genre fiction” and “literary fiction,” it’s certainly not that the former isn’t literary and the latter isn’t generic. It’s mostly that the generic conventions of...

‘John Ashbery: They Knew What They Wanted’ celebrates a poet and collagist who understood the value of fun

May 9, 2019 at 11:49 p.m.

When John Ashbery died last year, so many eulogists lined up to proclaim him the greatest American poet since whenever that it was easy to forget just how much fun...

Notable poetry of 2017

May 9, 2019 at 11:44 p.m.

For the fifth consecutive year, a gathering of some poetry that caught my ear in the preceding twelvemonth — not the “best,” not even necessarily my favorites (the only reason...

Reading Stephen King’s ‘It’: Still unsettling, all these years later

May 9, 2019 at 11:41 p.m.

My eighth-grade English teacher had a no-Stephen-King rule — which was rich considering that she made us read Ayn Rand's "Anthem" — but King's new novel about an evil clown...

‘Shadowbahn’: The first novel of the Trump era

May 9, 2019 at 11:28 p.m.

Let's see: Jesse Presley, Elvis' stillborn twin, hears the Mekons on a transistor radio on the 93rd floor of the South Tower, the Twin Towers having reappeared intact in the...

Best poetry books of 2016

May 9, 2019 at 11:23 p.m.

A year this bad is not going to be salvaged by poetry, of all things. But as usual there were a few must-read books of poems published in 2016. A...

Albert Murray collection offers statements and counterstatements on arts and culture

May 9, 2019 at 11:22 p.m.

"In a general sense perhaps all statements are also counterstatements." That's the first sentence of "The Omni-Americans," Albert Murray's 1970 exploration of black experience in and as American culture. His...

Philip Levine, who died last year, was as successful as an American poet can get without winning the Nobel Prize: two National Book Awards, a Pulitzer, a poet laureateship. His best-known poem, "They Feed They Lion," written in the aftermath of Detroit's 12th Street Riots of 1967, rolls all his strengths into one ball.

Poet Philip Levine writes own epitaph with posthumous releases

May 9, 2019 at 11:21 p.m.

Philip Levine, who died last year, was as successful as an American poet can get without winning the Nobel Prize: two National Book Awards, a Pulitzer, a poet laureateship. His...

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