Culture
One last MLB free agent for every team: Finding new homes for 30 available players
Spring training is around the corner, and the free agent market has been stripped of its universal impact. What’s left — with very few exceptions — are players who would barely move the needle on one roster but fill a specific need on another. So, let’s find those guys some uniforms and get on with it. Here’s one remaining free agent for every major league team.
Arizona Diamondbacks
Kenley Jansen, RHP
A few days ago, we might have paired the D-Backs with a right-handed bat, but they just filled that need by re-signing Randal Grichuk. So, what’s left is to solidify the back end of their bullpen. Putting Jansen in the ninth would leave Justin Martinez to serve as a high-octane setup man. And playing for a good team would give Jansen a chance to get the 31 saves he needs to tie Lee Smith for the third-most saves in history.
Athletics
Nick Pivetta, RHP
The A’s have already signed one free agent attached to the qualifying offer. So, what’s one more? Add Pivetta to Luis Severino and Jeffrey Springs, and the A’s would have a completely new top of the rotation while leaving room for young arms JP Sears, Joey Estes and Mitch Spence to round out the group. With a young and exciting lineup, and a couple of legitimate late-inning relievers — Mason Miller and Jose Leclerc — another proven starter could really raise the floor in Sacramento.
Atlanta Braves
Kyle Gibson, RHP
Stability. That’s all we’re looking for here. The Braves have done very little this offseason — Jurickson Profar and not much else — and are counting on the return of Spencer Strider and Ronald Acuña Jr. to meaningfully raise their ceiling. Fair enough. Strider, Chris Sale and Reynaldo Lopez are the impact starters at the top of the rotation, but another veteran starter would help solidify the group and protect against further injury.
Baltimore Orioles
John Means, RHP
The Orioles just filled their last glaring need by signing Ramon Laureano to provide some right-handed balance in the outfield. The market doesn’t offer meaningful upgrades to their rotation, and their bullpen is more or less full, but a reunion with Means — who underwent Tommy John surgery last summer — would bring back a former All-Star and begin building depth for next season.
Boston Red Sox
David Robertson, RHP
Entering his 17th season, David Robertson just keeps delivering strong performances. (Kiyoshi Mio / Imagn Images)
Massive impact would come from signing Alex Bregman, but short of that, the Red Sox could use another dependable arm in their bullpen, and Robertson, who pitched like his old self as a 39-year-old last season. He would give the team another experienced reliever who could even be an option in an uncertain ninth inning.
Chicago Cubs
Jalen Beeks, LHP
Recent trades for Ryan Pressly and Ryan Brasier have given the Cubs some much-needed help in the late innings, and a late deal with Beeks would give them another experienced reliever who’s been everything from a long man to a closer. Beeks would also give the Cubs some left-handed balance in their pen. Caleb Thielbar is their only lefty at the moment.
Chicago White Sox
Brendan Rodgers, 2B
Throw a dart at a list of free agents, and you’ll probably hit a name that could help the White Sox. They could really use a veteran pitcher, but how many veterans really want to be a part of such a rebuild? For Rodgers, though, the White Sox could provide an opportunity to play every day and build back some value after a couple of down seasons in Colorado.
Cincinnati Reds
Phil Maton, RHP
The Reds have plenty of role players and a full five-man rotation (though an additional starter wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world). What they don’t have is a single reliever who FanGraphs projects to have an ERA below 4.15. It’s not necessarily a bad bullpen, but it lacks a standout aside from Alexis Díaz (who’s not even the best reliever in his own family). So, let’s add another solid arm into the mix and let Terry Francona sort it out in spring training.
Cleveland Guardians
Kiké Hernández, CF/2B
Defensively, center field is the Guardians’ most glaring need. In terms of experience, they’re thinnest at second base. And their everyday lineup includes only one strictly right-handed hitter. Well, Hernández would address all of that. He would be their best defensive option in center, their most experienced option at second, and another right-handed bat on a roster loaded with lefties and switch hitters. Maybe Lane Thomas would still play center field against righties, but Hernández could play there against lefties and in the late innings. Maybe Juan Brito is ready to play second, but Hernández would free him to also help out at other positions.
Colorado Rockies
James McCann, C
You might think it would make sense to give the Rockies a veteran starter. But their starting pitchers already are veterans! Or maybe give them an experienced reliever. But who would want that job? So, let’s give the Rockies the most boring addition possible: a new backup catcher. Playing McCann behind Jacob Stallings would free Hunter Goodman to continue playing all over the field (first base, catcher, outfield corners) to see if his immense power will play at the big league level (he had a .228 on-base percentage but slugged .417 in a half season last year).
Detroit Tigers
Justin Turner, 1B
You know what would be really fun? Putting Alex Bregman in Detroit. But in this market, Turner is the next best thing. The Tigers definitely need another right-handed hitter — Gleyber Torres and Matt Vierling are their only everyday righties — and Turner could play first base and DH while letting manager A.J. Hinch mix and match with lefty hitters Kerry Carpenter, Colt Keith and Jace Jung. Turner would also give the Tigers a massive clubhouse presence as they try to build on last season’s breakout.
Houston Astros
Alex Verdugo, LF
We sent Bregman elsewhere, which means this version of the major league multi-verse won’t have the Astros filling their left field void by shifting Jose Altuve from second base. So, let’s give them a real left fielder. Bonus points for the fact Verdugo hits left-handed (the Astros’ only everyday lefty is Yordan Alvarez). FanGraphs is still projecting Verdugo to have a 1.1 WAR season, which is better than Ben Gamel and Taylor Trammell — the two left-handed outfielders currently jockeying for Astros’ playing time — have produced in the past four seasons combined. Verdugo hasn’t been especially good in a few years, but he’s the best of what’s left.
Kansas City Royals
Brandon Drury, 3B/2B
Brandon Drury had an ugly season, but before that he was a standout contributor for three years. (Stephen Brashear / USA Today)
According to FanGraphs WAR, there was not a player in baseball less valuable than Drury last season. He was a full 2.1 wins below replacement. So why would the Royals want him? Because they actually have enough infielders — if this signing goes belly up, they’re covered at second and third — but Drury had a 118 OPS+ from 2021 to 2023, and he generated that offense while playing first, second, third, left and right. Basically, Drury would be a chance for the Royals to maybe find some cheap offense. Their projected Opening Day roster on FanGraphs includes seven hitters projected to have a sub-100 wRC+. That includes their entire bench and their starting third baseman, Maikel Garcia, who’s a great defender but had a 69 wRC+ last season. If Drury can bounce back to be just league average at the plate, he could help the Royals at multiple positions.
Los Angeles Angels
Craig Kimbrel, RHP
The Angels are in wing-and-a-prayer territory, anyway. They need a ton of things to go right, and those things range from Mike Trout’s health to Kyle Hendricks’ sinker. Scott Kingery and Jo Adell are involved. Yoán Moncada just joined them. There’s a Rule 5 pick in there, too. It’s a lot. So, why not add one more wild card? Kimbrel was an All-Star in 2023 and he saved 23 games last season, but he also pitched so poorly that the Orioles released him in September. How many teams are in a position to give Kimbrel even a chance to close again? The Angels are! If Kimbrel stinks and Ben Joyce wins the job, so be it, but the Angels bullpen is crawling with 20-somethings, and adding a veteran to the mix wouldn’t be the worst idea.
Los Angeles Dodgers
Clayton Kershaw, LHP
What do you get the team that has everything? How about a Hall of Famer? And, in this case, it’s a Hall of Famer who is almost certainly going to re-sign with them eventually, anyway. Kershaw to the Dodgers is basically the free square in free agency bingo, but we’ll gladly take the gimme.
Miami Marlins
Cal Quantrill, RHP
The Marlins would be a reasonable landing spot for all sorts of free agency leftovers. Michael A. Taylor would give them a legitimate defender in center. South Florida native Anthony Rizzo would be a veteran presence and a left-handed option at first base. Pretty much any free-agent reliever would become the most experienced guy in their bullpen. But Quantrill feels like an upside play for their rotation. He’s only two years removed from a couple of encouraging seasons in Cleveland. Best-case scenario: Quantrill rounds out the Marlins rotation in April before becoming a trade chip in July.
Milwaukee Brewers
Paul DeJong, SS
This is the only remotely viable shortstop left on the free agent market (the next-best was Nick Ahmed, but he just signed a minor league deal with the Rangers). Signing DeJong would let the Brewers keep Brice Turang and Joey Ortiz at second and third, where they’re excellent defenders. DeJong would also give the Brewers another right-handed bat (their regular lineup already has four lefties).
Minnesota Twins
Luis Urías, 3B/SS
The Twins want to add infield depth, especially shortstop depth, and this just isn’t the free-agent market for teams that need a shortstop. There’s really only one free-agent shortstop left, and this hypothetical exercise has him landing in Milwaukee. The fact Urías, who hasn’t played a big league game at short, is even on the radar for such a role speaks to just how few options are out there (Ahmed recently signed a minor league deal with the Rangers). For teams in the market for a viable shortstop, it’s pretty much DeJong-or-bust.
New York Mets
Brooks Raley, LHP
Our first draft suggested the Mets re-sign Pete Alonso. Then they actually did! So, we went back to the drawing board and found a Mets roster that has basically everything covered. The Mets have seven experienced starting pitchers, at least six guys who could get time at second base, and a pretty solid bullpen. So, we’ll suggest bringing back Raley, who pitched well for the Mets the past two seasons before Tommy John surgery last summer. He won’t be available until the second half, at which point the Mets might be happy to have the extra lefty.
New York Yankees
Colin Poche, LHP
The Yankees have done most of their heavy lifting, and short of Bregman, there’s no free-agent infielder who meaningfully improves them at second base or third. But they could use a second left-handed reliever to pair with Tim Hill, and Poche is a proven commodity in the AL East.
Philadelphia Phillies
Héctor Neris, RHP
With every team, there’s a desire to come up with an interesting addition that fits one specific need, but the Phillies basically addressed the most glaring needs in December when they traded for Jésus Luzardo, signed Max Kepler and signed Jordan Romano. The free-agent market really doesn’t offer any other ideal fits. Neris at least would give them one more veteran arm, and a familiar arm at that. He would fit about as well as anyone. Basically, just give the Phillies one of the last relievers standing, hope all their big bats stay healthy, and call up Andrew Painter in June.
Pittsburgh Pirates
Lance Lynn, RHP
At 37, Lynn has considered transitioning to a bullpen role, and that’s where he might best fit the Pirates. The team could go the usual route and sign one of the remaining free-agent relievers — Andrew Chafin? Dylan Floro? Scott Barlow? — but Lynn feels like an upside play. If he thrives in a one-inning role, Lynn would give the Pirates a veteran arm to pair with David Bednar. And, frankly, with Johan Oviedo returning to the rotation from Tommy John surgery, Lynn could end up being a welcome fallback option should the Pirates need a starter instead.
San Francisco Giants
Mark Canha, DH/RF
This is probably out of the Giants’ price range, but the team did trade for Canha at last year’s deadline, and he delivered a .376 on-base percentage in the final two months. Canha doesn’t have the power typical of a DH, but his on-base skills are valuable, and the Giants don’t really have a better option at DH. Canha can also play first base and right field, two spots where the Giants have left-handed hitters and could use the right-handed option. Alternatively, the Giants could add a depth starter or bring in another relief pitcher, but it’s hard to imagine them doing anything to wow you at this point.
San Diego Padres
Jose Quintana, LHP
The first thought was to add J.D. Martinez or Rizzo to an already aging lineup and see what happens (the Padres don’t really have a DH as long as Luis Arraez is playing first base). Maybe the Padres could do that, but if they’re going to keep exploring trades for either Dylan Cease or Michael King, they’re going to need someone else to fill the innings. Frankly, the Padres could probably use the pitching depth anyway, and Quintana, 36, is coming off another solid season.
Seattle Mariners
Jose Iglesias, 2B
The Mariners are all about being reliably decent, so here’s a veteran second baseman who tends to hit OK while playing solid defense. He would add stability to a questionable Mariners infield and improve the bench by freeing Dylan Moore to serve as a super-utility man. Otherwise, maybe David Peralta as a left-handed bat off the bench?
St. Louis Cardinals
Jose Urquidy, RHP
The Cardinals seem content to just kind of exist this offseason. Maybe they’ll trade Nolan Arenado and open the door to another right-handed bat or add a guy like Andrew Heaney for a bit of rotation depth, but if the Cardinals are going to keep their focus on the future, we’ll do the same and take a look at a two-year deal with a guy recovering from Tommy John surgery. Urquidy probably won’t help much this season, but he could give the Cardinals a leg up in their search for 2026 rotation depth (Steven Matz, Miles Mikolas and Erick Fedde are free agents after this season).
Tampa Bay Rays
Kevin Pillar, CF
The Rays could use another right-handed bat and a backup in center field. Pillar, 36, had an .852 OPS against lefties last season, and while he’s no longer among the elite center fielders in baseball, both Defensive Runs Saved and Outs Above Average had him as a positive defender in center last season. He would provide a veteran presence alongside starting center fielder Jonny DeLuca.
Texas Rangers
Kendall Graveman, RHP
The Rangers seem to be collecting relievers who aren’t quite closers but are certainly comfortable pitching the late innings. Chris Martin, Robert Garcia, Jesse Chavez, Hoby Milner, Jacob Webb and Shawn Armstrong have all been added to the bullpen this offseason, so we’ll add one more to the mix. Graveman was a pretty good late-innings arm before shoulder surgery cost him all of 2024. He seems like a worthwhile addition to this hodgepodge bullpen the Rangers are putting together.
Toronto Blue Jays
Alex Bregman, 3B
This is the splash the Blue Jays have been trying to make for a couple of years. Bregman is a better fit — both short-term and long-term — than Alonso would have been, and he would give the Blue Jays one of the best infields in all of baseball alongside Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette and Andrés Giménez. Bregman is basically the biggest move any team could make, and the Blue Jays are as motivated as anyone to make it.
Washington Nationals
Kyle Finnegan, RHP
The Nationals are in a tough spot in a loaded NL East, but they went out of their way to add a couple of meaningful bats (Josh Bell, Nathaniel Lowe), they took an interesting gamble on Mike Soroka, and they have a couple of young outfielders just waiting to establish themselves as big league stars. Why do all that and leave the ninth inning unprotected? Finnegan has his shortcomings, but the Nationals never really replaced him this offseason, and at this point, bringing him back would be their best way to improve the bullpen.
(Top photo of Jansen: Billie Weiss / Boston Red Sox / Getty Images)
Let’s memorize a poem! Not because it’s good for us or because we think we should, but because it’s fun, a mental challenge with a solid aesthetic reward. You can amuse yourself, impress your friends and maybe discover that your way of thinking about the world — or even, as you’ll see, the universe — has shifted a bit.
Over the next five days, we’ll look closely at a great poem by one of our favorite poets, and we’ll have games, readings and lots of encouragement to help you learn it by heart. Some of you know how this works: Last year more Times readers than we could count memorized a jaunty 18-line recap of an all-night ferry ride. (If you missed that adventure, it’s not too late to embark. The ticket is still valid.)
This time, we’re training our telescopes on W.H. Auden’s “The More Loving One” — a clever, compact meditation on love, disappointment and the night sky.
Here’s the first of its four stanzas, read for us by Matthew McConaughey:
The More Loving One
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
Matthew McConaughey, actor and poet
In four short lines we get a brisk, cynical tour of the universe: hell and the heavens, people and animals, coldness and cruelty. Commonplace observations — that the stars are distant; that life can be dangerous — are wound into a charming, provocative insight. The tone is conversational, mixing decorum and mild profanity in a manner that makes it a pleasure to keep reading.
Here’s Tracy K. Smith, a former U.S. poet laureate, with the second stanza:
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Tracy K. Smith, poet
These lines abruptly shift the focus from astronomy to love, from the universal to the personal. Imagine how it would feel if the stars had massive, unrequited crushes on us! The speaker, couching his skepticism in a coy, hypothetical question, seems certain that we wouldn’t like this at all.
This certainty leads him to a remarkable confession, a moment of startling vulnerability. The poem’s title, “The More Loving One,” is restated with sweet, disarming frankness. Our friend is wearing his heart on his well-tailored sleeve.
The poem could end right there: two stanzas, point and counterpoint, about how we appreciate the stars in spite of their indifference because we would rather love than be loved.
But the third stanza takes it all back. Here’s Alison Bechdel reading it:
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Alison Bechdel, graphic novelist
The speaker downgrades his foolish devotion to qualified admiration. No sooner has he established himself as “the more loving one” than he gives us — and perhaps himself — reason to doubt his ardor. He likes the stars fine, he guesses, but not so much as to think about them when they aren’t around.
The fourth and final stanza, read by Yiyun Li, takes this disenchantment even further:
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
Yiyun Li, author
Wounded defiance gives way to a more rueful, resigned state of mind. If the universe were to snuff out its lights entirely, the speaker reckons he would find beauty in the void. A starless sky would make him just as happy.
Though perhaps, like so many spurned lovers before and after, he protests a little too much. Every fan of popular music knows that a song about how you don’t care that your baby left you is usually saying the opposite.
The last line puts a brave face on heartbreak.
So there you have it. In just 16 lines, this poem manages to be somber and funny, transparent and elusive. But there’s more to it than that. There is, for one thing, a voice — a thinking, feeling person behind those lines.
When he wrote “The More Loving One,” in the 1950s, Wystan Hugh Auden was among the most beloved writers in the English-speaking world. Before this week is over there will be more to say about Auden, but like most poets he would have preferred that we give our primary attention to the poem.
Its structure is straightforward and ingenious. Each of the four stanzas is virtually a poem unto itself — a complete thought expressed in one or two sentences tied up in a neat pair of couplets. Every quatrain is a concise, witty observation: what literary scholars call an epigram.
This makes the work of memorization seem less daunting. We can take “The More Loving One” one epigram at a time, marvelling at how the four add up to something stranger, deeper and more complex than might first appear.
So let’s go back to the beginning and try to memorize that insouciant, knowing first stanza. Below you’ll find a game we made to get you started. Give it a shot, and come back tomorrow for more!
Play a game to learn it by heart. Need more practice? Listen to Ada Limón, Matthew McConaughey, W.H. Auden and others recite our poem.
Question 1/6
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.
Your first task: Learn the first four lines!
Let’s start with the first couplet. Fill in the rhyming words.
Monday
Love, the cosmos and everything in between, all in 16 lines.
Tuesday (Available tomorrow)
What’s love got to do with it?
Wednesday (Available April 22)
How to write about love? Be a little heartsick (and the best poet of your time).
Thursday (Available April 23)
Are we alone in the universe? Does it matter?
Friday (Available April 24)
You did it! You’re a star.
Ready for another round? Try your hand at the 2025 Poetry Challenge.
Edited by Gregory Cowles, Alicia DeSantis and Nick Donofrio. Additional editing by Emily Eakin,
Joumana Khatib, Emma Lumeij and Miguel Salazar. Design and development by Umi Syam. Additional
game design by Eden Weingart. Video editing by Meg Felling. Photo editing by Erica Ackerberg.
Illustration art direction by Tala Safie.
Illustrations by Daniel Barreto.
Text and audio recording of “The More Loving One,” by W.H. Auden, copyright © by the Estate of
W.H. Auden. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Photograph accompanying Auden recording
from Imagno/Getty Images.
Literature
‘Romola’ (1863) by George Eliot
Who knew that there’s a major George Eliot novel that neither I nor any of my friends had ever heard of?
“Romola” was Eliot’s fourth novel, published between “The Mill on the Floss” (1860) and “Middlemarch” (1870-71). If my friends and I didn’t get this particular memo, and “Romola” is familiar to every Eliot fan but us, please skip the following.
“Romola” isn’t some fluky misfire better left unmentioned in light of Eliot’s greater work. It’s her only historical novel, set in Florence during the Italian Renaissance. It embraces big subjects like power, religion, art and social upheaval, but it’s not dry or overly intellectual. Its central character is a gifted, freethinking young woman named Romola, who enters a marriage so disastrous as to make Anna Karenina’s look relatively good.
It probably matters that many of Eliot’s other books have been adapted into movies or TV series, with actors like Hugh Dancy, Ben Kingsley, Emily Watson and Rufus Sewell. The BBC may be doing even more than we thought to keep classic literature alive. (In 1924, “Romola” was made into a silent movie starring Lillian Gish. It doesn’t seem to have made much difference.)
Anthony Trollope, among others, loved “Romola.” He did, however, warn Eliot against aiming over her readers’ heads, which may help explain its obscurity.
All I can say, really, is that it’s a mystery why some great books stay with us and others don’t.
‘Quiet Dell’ (2013) by Jayne Anne Phillips
This was an Oprah Book of the Week, which probably disqualifies it from B-side status, but it’s not nearly as well known as Phillips’s debut story collection, “Black Tickets” (1979), or her most recent novel, “Night Watch” (2023), which won her a long-overdue Pulitzer Prize.
Phillips has no parallel in her use of potent, stylized language to shine a light into the darkest of corners. In “Quiet Dell,” her only true-crime novel, she’s at the height of her powers, which are particularly apparent when she aims her language laser at horrific events that actually occurred. Her gift for transforming skeevy little lives into what I can only call “Blade Runner” mythology is consistently stunning.
Consider this passage from the opening chapter of “Quiet Dell”:
“Up high the bells are ringing for everyone alive. There are silver and gold and glass bells you can see through, and sleigh bells a hundred years old. My grandmother said there was a whisper for each one dead that year, and a feather drifting for each one waiting to be born.”
The book is full of language like that — and of complex, often chillingly perverse characters. It’s a dark, underrecognized beauty.
‘Solaris’ (1961) by Stanislaw Lem
You could argue that, in America, at least, the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem didn’t produce any A-side novels. You could just as easily argue that that makes all his novels both A-side and B-side.
It’s science fiction. All right?
I love science and speculative fiction, but I know a lot of literary types who take pride in their utter lack of interest in it. I always urge those people to read “Solaris,” which might change their opinions about a vast number of popular books they dismiss as trivial. As far as I know, no one has yet taken me up on that.
“Solaris” involves the crew of a space station continuing the study of an aquatic planet that has long defied analysis by the astrophysicists of Earth. Part of what sets the book apart from a lot of other science-fiction novels is Lem’s respect for enigma. He doesn’t offer contrived explanations in an attempt to seduce readers into suspending disbelief. The crew members start to experience … manifestations? … drawn from their lives and memories. If the planet has any intentions, however, they remain mysterious. All anyone can tell is that their desires and their fears, some of which are summoned from their subconsciousness, are being received and reflected back to them so vividly that it becomes difficult to tell the real from the projected. “Solaris” has the peculiar distinction of having been made into not one but two bad movies. Read the book instead.
‘Fox 8’ (2013) by George Saunders
If one of the most significant living American writers had become hypervisible with his 2017 novel, “Lincoln in the Bardo,” we’d go back and read his earlier work, wouldn’t we? Yes, and we may very well have already done so with the story collections “Tenth of December” (2013) and “Pastoralia” (2000). But what if we hadn’t yet read Saunders’s 2013 novella, “Fox 8,” about an unusually intelligent fox who, by listening to a family from outside their windows at night, has learned to understand, and write, in fox-English?: “One day, walking neer one of your Yuman houses, smelling all the interest with snout, I herd, from inside, the most amazing sound. Turns out, what that sound is, was: the Yuman voice, making werds. They sounded grate! They sounded like prety music! I listened to those music werds until the sun went down.”
Once Saunders became more visible to more of us, we’d want to read a book that ventures into the consciousness of a different species (novels tend to be about human beings), that maps the differences and the overlaps in human and animal consciousness, explores the effects of language on consciousness and is great fun.
We’d all have read it by now — right?
‘Between the Acts’ (1941) by Virginia Woolf
You could argue that Woolf didn’t have any B-sides, and yet it’s hard to deny that more people have read “Mrs. Dalloway” (1925) and “To the Lighthouse” (1927) than have read “The Voyage Out” (1915) or “Monday or Tuesday” (1921). Those, along with “Orlando” (1928) and “The Waves” (1931), are Woolf’s most prominent novels.
Four momentous novels is a considerable number for any writer, even a great one. That said, “Between the Acts,” her last novel, really should be considered the fifth of her significant books. The phrase “embarrassment of riches” comes to mind.
Five great novels by the same author is a lot for any reader to take on. Our reading time is finite. We won’t live long enough to read all the important books, no matter how old we get to be. I don’t expect many readers to be as devoted to Woolf as are the cohort of us who consider her to have been some sort of dark saint of literature and will snatch up any relic we can find. Fanatics like me will have read “Between the Acts” as well as “The Voyage Out,” “Monday or Tuesday” and “Flush” (1933), the story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel. Speaking for myself, I don’t blame anyone who hasn’t gotten to those.
I merely want to add “Between the Acts” to the A-side, lest anyone who’s either new to Woolf or a tourist in Woolf-landia fail to rank it along with the other four contenders.
As briefly as possible: It focuses on an annual village pageant that attempts to convey all of English history in a single evening. The pageant itself interweaves subtly, brilliantly, with the lives of the villagers playing the parts.
It’s one of Woolf’s most lusciously lyrical novels. And it’s a crash course, of sorts, in her genius for conjuring worlds in which the molehill matters as much as the mountain, never mind their differences in size.
It’s also the most accessible of her greatest books. It could work for some as an entry point, in more or less the way William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” (1930) can be the starter book before you go on to “The Sound and the Fury” (1929) or “Absalom, Absalom!” (1936).
As noted, there’s too much for us to read. We do the best we can.
More in Literature
See the rest of the issue
Literature
‘Prayer’ (1985) by Galway Kinnell
Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.
“I typically say Kinnell’s words at the start of my day, as I’m pedaling a traffic-laden path to my office,” says Major Jackson, 57, the author of six books of poetry, including “Razzle Dazzle” (2023). “The poem encourages a calm acceptance of the day’s events but also wants us to embrace the misapprehension and oblivion of life, to avoid probing too deeply for answers to inscrutable questions. I admire what Kinnell does with only 14 words; the repetition of ‘what,’ ‘that’ and ‘is’ would seem to limit the poem’s sentiment but, paradoxically, the poem opens widely to contain all manner of human experience. The three ‘is’es in the middle line give it a symmetry that makes its message feel part of a natural order, and even more convincing. Thanks to the skillful punctuation, pauses and staccato rhythm, a tonal quality of interior reflection emerges. Much like a haiku, it continues after its last words, lingering like the last note played on a piano that slowly fades.”
“Just as I was entering young adulthood, probably slow to claim romantic feelings, a girlfriend copied out a poem by Pablo Neruda and slipped it into an envelope with red lipstick kisses all over it. In turn, I recited this poem. It took me the remainder of that winter to memorize its lines,” says Jackson. “The poem captures the pitch of longing that defines love at its most intense. The speaker in Shakespeare’s most famous sonnet believes the poem creates the beloved, ‘So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.’ (Sonnet 18). In Rilke’s expressive declarations of yearning, the beloved remains elusive. Wherever the speaker looks or travels, she marks his world by her absence. I find this deeply moving.”
“Clifton faced many obstacles, including cancer, a kidney transplant and the loss of her husband and two of her children. Through it all, she crafted a long career as a pre-eminent American poet,” says Jackson. “Her poem ‘won’t you celebrate with me’ is a war cry, an invitation to share in her victories against life’s persistent challenges. The poem is meaningful to all who have had to stare down death in a hospital or had to bereave the passing of close relations. But, even for those who have yet to mourn life’s vicissitudes, the poem is instructive in cultivating resilience and a persevering attitude. I keep coming back to the image of the speaker’s hands and the spirit of steadying oneself in the face of unspeakable storms. She asks in a perfectly attuned gorgeously metrical line, ‘what did i see to be except myself?’”
‘Sonnet 94’ (1609) by William Shakespeare
They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmovèd, cold, and to temptation slow,
They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces
And husband nature’s riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die;
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity.
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
“It’s one of the moments of Western consciousness,” says Frederick Seidel, 90, the author of more than a dozen collections of poetry, including “So What” (2024). “Shakespeare knows and says what he knows.”
“It trombones magnificent, unbearable sorrow,” says Seidel.
“It’s smartass and bitter and bright,” says Seidel.
These interviews have been edited and condensed.
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