The Pope has published another book of poetry. So how is it? Dan Chiasson is impressed: “It’s hard to get a sense of the pope’s poetics, in the broadest sense, but I can say that he seems to favor end-stopped vers libre—surprising, given his investment elsewhere in order and hierarchy. There are biblical cadences, to be sure, but mostly the poems strike the secular-didactic tone of self-help literature. Very little hellfire; what we get instead is mostly ‘Chicken Soup for the Aging Pontiff’s Soul.’ Still, what I’ve read of ‘Roman Triptych’ is rather good, in the way most celebrity poetry is rather good.”