Jay Parini, a poet and novelist who teaches at Middlebury College, is most recently the author of The Way of Jesus: Living an Ethical and Spiritual Life.

Mind Games

The literary critic Edmund Wilson and the novelist Vladimir Nabokov were the greatest of friends, until they weren’t. The cause of their break up? A poem. But an epic poem, fittingly.

INTEMPERATE

Trump is the worst, but he’s just the leader of a pack of political candidates who don’t seem to understand that hateful speech can trigger horrible effects.