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Despair as Sustenance
Zero at the Bone:Fifty Entries Against Despairby christian wimanrnfarrar, straus and giroux, 320 pages, $30 The poet Christian Wiman once told me, “It is blasphemy to paraphrase a poem.”...
Shakespeare’s First Folio Turns 400
In 1632, John Milton published his first poem in English. Long before Paradise Lost had even been conceived, an unsigned sixteen-line poem appeared in the front matter of Shakespeare’s...
Sharp Compassion
A History of Present Illnessby anna deforestrnrnlittle, brown and company, 176 pages, $25 Martin Luther had a sort of terror (anfechtung) engendered by the perfect holiness of a God...