I can’t remember when we met for the first time but I remember our conversations about childhoods in remote place, Canadian poetry, Dante and Milton, Gilgamesh (I hadn’t read his masterly book on the epic), Greek and Roman epigraphs (nor had I read then his equally masterly book on the ancient Greek poets) and of course, about PN Review and the Carcanet poets, most of whom were unknown to me. Perhaps there were not more than a few conversations, but in my always creative memory they seem legion because when I read yet another issue of PN Review I feel I’m having one more conversation with Michael, and learn something more about the infinite library he carries in his mind. Especially these days when the New York Times cautiously warns its readers how long it will take them to read an article (do you have two minutes, four minutes, six minutes to waste on this?); when a prestigious reviewer announces that Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob is too long for a savvy reader of today; when the British Library Crime Classics carry a warning ad usum delphini letting its audience know that the authors of the thirties and forties use language that some might find inappropriate; when the Dr Seuss books are bowdlerized and courses on Ovid’s Metamorphoses at several colleges tell the students that they can skip the class if they feel that scenes of rape might traumatize them, I rejoice in knowing Michael and following his work that celebrates with intelligence and quiet erudition and wit the freedom ...