poet critic person · typographer @FaberBooks (and elsewhere) · contributor @theTLS (and elsewhere) · typesetting commissions: [email protected]
Joined May 2012
- Tweets2.8K
- Following1.2K
- Followers5.4K
- Likes59K
Pinned Tweet
My most recent piece for @theTLS is a review of Helen Vendler’s final book of essays on poetry. A truly brilliant collection overall, though she was wrong about Ocean Vuong, who is – as we know – shit.
GET IT HERE:
the-tls.com/literature/poetr…
Tom Cook retweeted
If you've heard me wanging on about John Clare recently, here's the reason - I've been writing about him for the @LRB.
Read! Enjoy!
lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n19/…
Tom Cook retweeted
In 1667, there was a book called “l nipotismo di Roma” (“The History of the Popes' Nephews”).
It explored how Pope Sixtus IV granted favors to his “nephews.”
Now, ‘nepotism’ means “favoritism based on kinship.”
Fine, I’ll say it again. The body of surviving texts used for *all* claims of this kind is far too small for any actual linguist or statistician to take seriously. Whether it’s Brian Vickers (see reply) or the New Oxford Shakespeare, it’s built on sand
theguardian.com/culture/2026…
I covered the previous round of claims – made to shore up Brian Vickers’s concocted new edition of Thomas Kyd – in the TLS last year:
the-tls.com/literature-by-re…
It led to a delightful war on the letters page. This was the last thing I said about it all:
xitter.cf/TomCook24/status/19639…
Thanks to @TheTLS for publishing this, which is the last thing I’ll say about Brian Vickers, Gabriel Egan (what a charming man), and the tedium of ‘attribution studies’
Ach, what a loss. I lived down the road from Terry Street when I was a student at Hull, and he was so fondly remembered there. ‘I wish him grass’
Tom Cook retweeted
People who like CS Lewis more than me are unsophisticated, simple naïfs. People who like him less than me are tryhard pseuds. Only I like CS Lewis the correct amount.
Tom Cook retweeted
'Nashville Skyline' is the situation when Bob Dylan acts like it's perfectly normal that his new LP is a wildly horny 28-minute Country & Western album wherein he sings like a particularly hash-drunk Dean Martin, and we all agree that it's perfect. Throw my ticket out the window.
Tom Cook retweeted
Any bibliophile Larkinophile out there: this is your Christmas come early.
newversereview.substack.com/…
Tom Cook retweeted
65 years ago today Robert Shelton’s review ran in the New York Times, kickstarting the series of events that led
to Bob Dylan signing a Columbia recording contract less than a month later. We’ll never know how his career would have played out if this review hadn’t been written.
Tom Cook retweeted
historians writing about england in 1640-41 love interspersing their primary narratives with coy little asides about "an obscure backbencher from Cambridge named Oliver Cromwell"
Tom Cook retweeted
I'm back in @PoetryFound with a longread about what "a writer's life" looks like, based on 20+ books with "a writer's life" (or similar) as title or subtitle.
This was initially an Oxford lecture in 2024; I'm delighted to see it published!
Read for free:
poetryfoundation.org/article…
Tom Cook retweeted
New book on the way! A decade-plus in the making. And it's coming into the world with the most absurdly glorious honour guard. Couldn't be happier. press.princeton.edu/books/ha…
I think a lot of great poetry, especially great modern poetry, is the same. The prevailing wisdom is that the language/imagery of poetry should be completely original, but a lot of modern greats – Eliot, Bishop, Larkin – skirt breathtakingly close to cliché *and get away with it*
