Poetic Obituaries: [Richard] Poirier, who was a longtime professor of

English at Rutgers, founded Raritan, an influential literary journal based there, in 1981. The magazine was an attempt--successful, by most standards--to engage both academics and non-academics "in a conversation about literature and culture," in the description of T. Jackson Lears, who took over as editor of Raritan in 2002.

"He really believed that literature was something that could be analyzed and criticized in ordinary language," Mr. Lears said in a telephone interview Monday. "He believed you could be playful and rigorous. And he thought that the academy had cut off criticism from a lot of ordinary readers."

from The New York Times: Richard Poirier, a Scholar of Literature, Dies at 83

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