Even the best critical writing on Emily Dickinson underestimates her. She is frightening. To come to her directly from Dante, Spenser, Blake, and Baudelaire is to find her sadomasochism obvious and flagrant. Birds, bees, and amputated hands are the dizzy stuff of this poetry. Dickinson is like the homosexual cultist draping himself in black leather and chains to bring the idea of masculinity into aggressive visibility.

Criticism at its best is re-creative, not spirit-killing.

Our presence in Afghanistan is not worth the price of any more American lives or treasure.

government has no business intervening in any consensual private behavior.

Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope.

My anti-liberal position should not be mistaken for conservatism.

Over the past 20 years, I have noticed that the most flexible, dynamic, inquisitive minds among my students have been industrial design majors. Industrial designers are bracingly free of ideology and cant. The industrial designer is trained to be a clear-eyed observer of the commercial world - which, like it or not, is modern reality.