Tag Archives: To His Coy Mistress

Ensnar’d with Flow’rs I Fall on Grass

Friday I found utterly dispiriting this past week’s Democratic debates in which candidates lasered in on tiny differences while a fire rages all around us. I haven’t wanted to relax my vigilance regarding Donald Trump since autocrats win when we become so worn down that we stop paying attention. Nevertheless, these two wretched debates made […]

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Celebrating the Sun

Friday – Summer Solstice Cultures and civilizations since time immemorial have celebrated the summer solstice, with many magnificent works of architecture (including Stonehenge, the Temple of the Sun at Machu Picchu, the Egyptian pyramids, the Mayans’ Chichen Itza, and Scotland’s Ring of Brodgar) constructed so as to mark the date. Spiritual author Starhawk discusses the […]

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Helms’s Attack on Marvell’s “Coy Mistress”

Tales of unexpected attacks against great literature: in 1966 Jesse Helms, later a rightwing North Carolina senator, attacked Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” for providing male students a chance to talk about erotic matter in front of female students.

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10 Memorable Poetic Pick-Up Lines

10 memorable pick-up lines from poetic greats. Try them at a bar near you.

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Textualist Judges Out of Control

Textualist judges committed the same mistake as formalists in ruling against federal subsidies for citizens who signed up for Obamacare in the federal exchanges.

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Nothing So Sensible as Sensual Inundation

Poetry, with its eye on what really matters, can help us taste food again. Mary Oliver’s “Plum Trees” reminds us to eat with full awareness.

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Empty Sex in an Empty World

John Wilmot, by Jacob Huysmans (1675) I’m have just finished teaching Lord Rochester and, as always, it has been an adventure.   I sometimes think I get more embarrassed than the students by his explicit sexual language.   My women students (they’re all women in this class) are more tolerant of his diatribes against their gender than I […]

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