Category Archives: Uncategorized

Optimism in the Face of Trumpism

Optimistic about the future, feminist Solnit sees the right panicking over liberalism’s advances. Her Gramsci quote echoes Matthew Arnold and Virginia Woolf.

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Palm Sunday and Two Donkey Poems

Two donkey poems to celebrate Palm Sunday, by G.K. Chesterton and Mary Oliver.

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Lit in the Year after Justin’s Death

In the year following Justin’s death, important works were Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Tennyson’s In Memoriam.

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The Courage of a Tennessee Librarian

As a Tennessee library direct stands tall against a reactionary library board, I use Beowulf to reflect on the courage involved.

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An Optimist Revises Yeats’s “Second Coming”

Parodies of Yeats’s “Second Coming” and Williams’s “This Is Just to Say” provides us with a little midweek levity.

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The Goddess Nemesis at Work in Iran

The goddess Nemesis, mentioned in Hesiod’s Theogony and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, is at work in Iran.

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Catch-22 and DJT’s Iran “Excursion”

Catch-22 understand perfectly Trump’s double dealing in the Iranian conflict.

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Clifton: the dead shall rise again

Lucille Clifton celebrates Jesus’s Lazarus miracle by pointing to the resilience of the African diaspora.

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Using Lit to Grapple with a Death

Friday I’ve written so many times about the accidental drowning death of my son Justin—most thoroughly in Better Living through Literature—that I won’t repeat what I’ve said. Instead, I use today’s “a life lived in literature” installment to reflect back on aspects I haven’t touched on before, some of which are unbearably painful but which may […]

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