Micah Mattix is assistant professor of literature at Houston Baptist University.

Micah Mattix is an assistant professor of literature at Houston Baptist University and curates Prufrock, a free daily newsletter on books, art, and ideas. Become a fan of First Things on Facebook, subscribe to First Things via RSS, and follow First Things o

Micah Mattix will be examining one great line of verse. -Ed. The final great line in this short series may seem an odd choice because, well, it’s not so great, at least on its own, in terms of either craft or intellectual heft. Some readers may recognize it

Micah Mattix will be examining one great line of verse. -Ed. You cannot have poetry without form, just as you cannot have prose fiction without narrative structure or drama without dialogue or action. And what creates form in poetry, after the constraint of

Micah Mattix will be examining one great line of verse. -Ed. That one of the most striking lines of poetry on beauty’s impermanence was written by a priest-killer and a thief is among literary history’s many seeming incongruencies. “Where are the snows of y

Micah Mattix will be examining one great line of verse. -Ed. The famous first line of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land was almost certainly not written in April but in January. In a letter on January 23, 1921, Eliot refers to the nascent poem as “the first writ

Micah Mattix is assistant professor of literature at Houston Baptist University. RESOURCES “USADA releases massive evidence vs. Lance Armstrong,” USA Today “Lance Armstrong stripped of all 7 Tour de France titles, banned for life,” FOX News “Behind Lan

Micah Mattix is assistant professor of literature at Houston Baptist University. Become a fan of First Things on Facebook, subscribe to First Things via RSS, and follow First Things on Twitter.

Micah Mattix is Assistant Professor of Literature at Houston Baptist University. RESOURCES Nikolai Gogol, The Night Before Christmas Become a fan of First Things on Facebook, subscribe to First Things via RSS, and follow First Things on Twitter.

Micah Mattix is Assistant Professor in Literature at Houston Baptist University. He is the author of Frank O'Hara and the Poetics of Saying 'I'. RESOURCES Public Discourse: Micah Mattix’s “On Form and Flarf” and “Saving Poetry from Ideology”

Micah Mattix is Assistant Professor in Literature at Houston Baptist University. He is the author of Frank O'Hara and the Poetics of Saying 'I'.