Tolkien’s “The Road Goes Ever On and On” is a good poem for travelers returning home.
Monthly Archives: July 2016
Not Your Father’s Apple Cider
A visit to my cousins’ hard apple cider processing plant showed me that making the beverage has changed markedly since the days of John Keats and Robert Frost.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Ode to Autumn", After Apple-Picking, apples, farming, hard apple cider, John Keats, Robert Frost Comments closed
The Tern from Turner, Maine
A fun poem about a liberated tern from Turner, Maine.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Fat and Unliberated Female Tern", Scott Bates, Turner Maine Comments closed
Mustering Courage To Become Jane Eyre
I’m convinced that “Jane Eyre” helped give my great-grandmother the courage to leave her home and launch herself into the world as a governess.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Charlotte Bronte, governesses, Jane Eyre, Lizzy Scott, memoirs, restless women Comments closed
Stillness, One of the Doors of the Temple
The Biblical story where Jesus visits the home of Mary and Martha can be read as an injunction to eschew busyness and focus on God. This Mary Oliver poem captures the spirit of such a lesson.
My Great Grandmother Read for Courage
Reading over the memoirs of my great grandmother, I have been impressed by how reading literature helped her get through the hard times. The authors included Tennyson, George Eliot, Susan Warner, and Charlotte Yonge.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "May Queen", Alfred Lord Tennyson, ancestors, Charles Kinglsey, Charlotte Yonge, Daisy Chain, family memoirs, George Eliot, Heir of Redcliffe, Mill on the Floss, Oscar Wilde, Susan Warner, Wide Wide World Comments closed
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.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Andrew Marvell, censorship, rightwing politics, To His Coy Mistress Comments closed
Tales of the Wayside Inn
A visit to the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts made me aware of Longfellow’s collection “Tales from the Wayside Inn.” Like Longfellow’s storytellers, I had a good time there.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged conviviality, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Tales of Wayside Inn Comments closed
Toni Morrison’s Caution about Black Anger
The killer of the Dallas policemen is not unlike Guitar in Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon.” Through Guitar, Morrison shows how black anger is corrupted by violence. She also shows, through the novel’s protagonist (Milkman), how black resolve is stronger than anger and can soar above the earth.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged black anger, Black Lives Matter, Dallas shooting, police killings, Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison Comments closed
