Jane Hirshfield’s “Fifth Day,” written five days into the Trump administration, capture the president’s war against science and the environment.
As one who specializes in 18th century British lit, I’m fascinated with how jigsaw puzzles represent order arising from chaos.
Monday My son gave me a tough-love talk about my writing at a wedding reception this past Saturday afternoon. We were in Iowa together for my wife’s nephew and Darien took a few moments to express doubts about book he is helping me self-publish. While he is a big supporter of the blog, he worries […]
Monday My wife Julia alerted me to an intriguing although somewhat frustrating article in Atlantic about the end of time. Drawing on Frank Kermode’s 1967 The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, Megan Garber wrestles with an issue recently raised by The Washington Post: how do we live with constant reminders […]
Posted in Shakespeare (William), Yeats (William Butler) | Also tagged "Dover Beach", "Second Coming", endings, Frank Kermode, King Lear, Matthew Arnold, modernism, post-apocalyptic fiction, Samuel Beckett, Sense of an Ending, William Butler Yeats, William Shakespeare, world weary ennui | Thursday I share today the introduction to my upcoming book, which is still in draft form and whose title I keep changing. Latest title: Read to Resist: Classic Lit Provides Tools for Battling Trump and Trumpism. I’m still not entirely satisfied with that and so will keep tinkering. In any event, here’s my first attempt […]
Posted in Beowulf Poet, Lee (Harper), Milton (John), Pope (Alexander), Wells (H. G.) | Also tagged Beowulf, Donald Trump, Dunciad, Go Set a Watchman, H. G. Wells, Harper Lee, Invisible Man, John Milton, Leo Tolstoy, Othello, Paradise Lost, To Kill a Mockingbird, Trump resistance, War and Peace, William Shakespeare | “National Inquirer” is in trouble for having conspired to bury article critical of Donald Trump. Alexander Pope described such publications in “The Dunciad.”
Pope’s “a little learning” seems dangerous at first glance but the alternative is not entirely attractive.
Roseanne Barr and Samantha Bee gave their fans a quick high with their foul language, but such language does little substantive.
Celebrity culture contributed to the Aziz Ansari scandal and the commotion it has caused. Alexander Pope sets forth the dynamics in “Rape of the Lock.”
