The political world seems to be agog over Sarah Palin these days, with Joel Klein of Time and David Broder of The Washington Post, two columnists I respect, telling us to take her very seriously. This has got me thinking of fictional populists, especially Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men (1946), one of […]
Monthly Archives: February 2010
Sarah Palin and All the King’s Men
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Alexander Pope, All the King's Men, Epistle to Arburthnot, politics, Populism, Robert Penn Warren, Sarah Palin Comments closed
The Light that Came from Lucille Clifton
I have just heard about the death of poet Lucille Clifton and I still can’t wrap by head around the news. Even as I write this sentence, the opening paragraph of a story by James Baldwin (whom Lucille knew well) comes to me: I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my […]
Earth, Love, Birches, and Ice Storms
I promised this post on Robert Frost’s “Birches” in the event that we have an ice storm. I don’t know yet whether we will have one, but we had frozen rain for much of the night, and as I write this (Wednesday morning) we are being attacked by a blizzard. So if I don’t arrange […]
Snow Days Open Up Cracks in Time
An unusually heavy snowstorm has locked us into our homes these past few days, cancelling my Monday classes and locking down the county. Years ago, in an essay I’d love to find again, an author wrote about the “found time” of a snow day. She noted that, because we normally believe we must make every […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Stopping by Woods on a Winter Evening", Nature, Robert Frost, Time Comments closed
Win or Lose, Turn to Beowulf
Drew Brees, Super Bowl MVP A few years back, if I remember the article correctly, I came across two interesting statistics about life in America on Super Bowl Sunday. During the game the country’s crime drops to the lowest level of the year. Following the game, however, acts of spousal violence hit their highest levels of […]
Bread (Pretzels) and (Super Bowl) Circuses
Bread and circuses. That was the accusation of the Roman satirist Juvenal, directed against those politicians who used free bread and gladiatorial contests to divert the populace’s mind from their political responsibilities. Today our diversions continue to occur in coliseums and arenas. I plead guilty to having been so diverted. These past […]
Quarterback Poems for Inspiration
When I was a child, my father used to read us poems from a wonderful poetry anthology called Some Haystacks Don’t Even Have Any Needle, edited by Stephen Dunning. Two of the poems were about quarterbacks, which seems appropriate for this Super Bowl week given that the top two quarterbacks in football will be playing. […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "The Passer", "Ties", Dabney Stuart, Football, George Abbe, Sports Comments closed
