Blake’s “Jerusalem” can be read as a challenge to oppose the forces of climate change that threaten our beautiful country.
Monthly Archives: June 2021
Hydrocarbons Are Our Dark Satanic Mills
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Jerusalem", climate change, Environment, heat wave, William Blake Comments closed
Looking Forward, Not Back
Seeking to resurrect Troy, Aeneas takes on a challenge also facing America.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Hellas", Alfred Lord Tennyson, declining empires, Donald Trump, Make America Great Again, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ulysses Comments closed
Bringing Back the Games of Yesteryear
My grandson is visiting, getting me to break out the old games my father loved.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Ballad of the Games of Yesteryear", "Ballad of the Ladies of Bygone Times", Children, children's games, Francois Villon, Scott Bates Comments closed
Coping with Pain
My mother fractured her pelvis this past week. This poem about pain helps me empathize.
David and Jonathan’s Love
Abraham Cowley has a poem about David and Jonathan that leaves me with mixed feelings. Their friendship was purer, he contends, than sexual relationships.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "David and Jonathan", Abraham Cowley, David and Jonathan, homosexuality, homosocial relations Comments closed
Holmes and Lupin, a Comparison
Netflix’s Lupin is based on Leblanc’s “gentleman burglar series,” which itself owes much to Sherlock Holmes.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Arthur Conan Doyle, detective fiction, Lupin, Maurice Leblanc, Scandal in Bohemia, Study in Scarlet Comments closed
Eternally Damned after Reading a Book
In which I compare Austen’s Marianne and Willoughby to Dante’s Paulo and Francesca.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Castaway", "Task", Alexander Pope, Dante, Desire, Essay on Man, Inferno, James Thomson, Jane Austen, Relationships, Seasons, Sense and Sensibility, Sir Walter Scott, William Cowper Comments closed
Lit Steels Spines in Face of Pressure
One answer to how Austen’s Fanny Price resists the unrelenting family pressure to marry Crawford: she has read Richardson’s “Clarissa.”
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Clarissa, Family, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Marriage, Samuel Richardson Comments closed
Putin Quoting Tolstoy? Puleeze!
Putin claimed to quote Tolstoy but didn’t in his meeting with Biden. What he says is reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit, however.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Flannery O'Connor, Good Man Is Hard to Find, Joe Biden, Leo Tolstoy, Soul, Vladimir Putin, War and Peace Comments closed
