In memoriam: William Safire, a gem of a wordsmith September 29, 2009: Was William Safire a poet? No. He was a Nixon speechwriter, a conservative pundit, a four-time novelist, and a funny, fastidious observer of English usage. But can we detect his influence, however great or small, on such dextrous manipulators of contemporary verse as Matthea Harvey, Heather McHugh, and Paul Muldoon (among others, [...] by Abigail Deutsch