When I was in middle school, I found myself in the midst of the South’s school desegregation battles. (I was born in 1951 and my family moved to Sewanee, Tennessee in 1954). Therefore, I experienced a disturbing sense of déjà vu when I saw Virginia governor Bob McDonnell two weeks ago declaring a special month […]
Monthly Archives: April 2010
Republicans Need a Shakespearean Fool
William Dyce, “King Lear and the Fool in the Storm” (1851) There’s been a lot of talk about bubbles in recent years. Tiger Woods’ bubble, which cut him off from his fellow human beings, may have led to some of his self-destructive behavior. The Vatican has been living within a bubble for a while, unable […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged King Lear, politics, Republican Party, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Becoming a Window through Thy Grace
Saint Chapelle in Paris Spiritual Sunday George Herbert is the author of this lovely 17th-century poem about stained glass windows. As so often with this humble Anglican rector, he is filled with self doubts, seeing himself as “brittle crazy glass,” and wonders how anyone can be worthy enough to preach God’s eternal word. But he […]
Hockey, Canada’s Great Romance
Sidney Crosby Sports Saturday Jason Blake, a faculty member at the University of Ljubljana English Department, has just written a book on Canadian Hockey Literature (University of Toronto Press, 2010). The book explores five national themes addressed by hockey literature: nationhood, the hockey dream, violence, national identity, and family. I met Jason (who is Canadian) […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Adultery, Cold-Cocked: On Hockey, Hockey, Lorna Jackson, Mark Jarman, Richard B. Wright, Roch Carrier, Salvage King, Sports, Sweater, Ya! Comments closed
Hollywood’s Secret: We Can Have it All
Film Friday In my Film Genre class I’ve just been teaching Meet Me in St. Louis, the 1944 musical where Judy Garland, prior to her family leaving their beloved home to move to New York, sings “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” The film sent me back to a book that has been instrumental in […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged American identity, Meet Me in St. Louis, politics, Populism, Vincente Minnelli Comments closed
Remembering the West Virginia Miners
Ma, Tom, and Pa Joad in John Ford’s Grapes of Wrath I don’t know a lot about the details of the Massey coal mining accident that killed 29 miners in West Virginia last week, but, from what I’ve been able to make out, it was a non-union mine owned by a heavily fined company that […]
Neuro-Lit Riding to the Rescue?
I wrote last Thursday about neuro-lit, which an article in the New York Times has trumpeted as English’s “best new thing.” Certain practitioners are analyzing the way readers become absorbed in stories—fictional identification—by scanning their brains as they read. Practitioners of this new approach are contending that fictional identification has played a key role in the […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Chretien de Troye, David Lodge, Holy Grail, Literary Theory, Neuro-Lit, Percival, Small World Comments closed
Poems for Abuse Victims
Lucille Clifton Having attended a memorial ceremony for the recently departed poet Lucille Clifton this past Saturday (see yesterday’s post), today I commemorate her by putting some of her poems to good use. Catholic priest molestation has been in the news recently (less the molestation, which tragically occurs in all walks of life, than the […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "forgiving my father", "man who killed the bear", "moonchild", "shapeshifter poems", Child Abuse, Lucille Clifton, sex Comments closed
