You will not be surprised to hear that poetry played a big role in my wedding 37 years ago, on June 8, 1973. The outdoor wedding occurred shortly after Carleton’s Commencement ceremony (our good friends John Colman and Anne Smith got married shortly before). Three days earlier, after an intense week finishing up my final essays, […]
Tag Archives: Marriage
After 37 Years, Still 2 Lights above the Sea
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Ars Poetica", "On Marriage", Archibald MacLeish, Kahlil Gibran, love Comments closed
Sadness over Little Women, 12th Night
Although reading and grading student essays is the most demanding aspect of my job—I graded around 535 formal and informal essays this past semester, as well as reading another 100 essay proposals and early drafts—it can also be the most rewarding. That’s because I will regularly see students working through major life issues at the […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged 12th Night, Education, Feminism, Little Women, Louisa Mae Alcott, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Austen’s Good Enough Match
First of all, a happy birthday to Jane Austen (thanks to my mother for pointing this out). Jane would have been 234 today. My students have been bothered by the Marianne-Brandon marriage that concludes Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, and I’m inclined to agree with them. Kat Vander Wende reasonably pointed out that the sought-after […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "The River Merchant's Wife", Ezra Pound, Jane Austen, love, Sense and Sensibility Comments closed
True Love and a Steady Income
Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson as Edward, Elinor I’ve been reading essays on Sense and Sensibility and thinking of all the useful lessons it teaches, including about the influence of money on people’s dating decisions. One of my students focused on the figure of Lucy Steele, whom she compared to a woman in the reality […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Jane Austen, Money, Romance, Sense and Sensibility Comments closed
Jane Austen’s Subtle Stiletto
I’m teaching Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility at the moment and, once again, recalling what a masterpiece it is. The interactions between the sisters never fail to elicit sibling stories from my students. Some of us see ourselves as the elder sister Elinor, others as the younger sister Marianne. As the oldest in my family, […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Jane Austen, Money, Sense and Sensibility, Wealth Comments closed
Rediscovering Wild Strawberries
My daughter-in-law’s recent blog post on children, discussed yesterday, has taken me back to a time when I myself wrestled with the question of whether we should bring children into an uncertain world. A powerful work addressing this issue is Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, a magnificent film that feels like literature. The film is about a day […]
On the Logic of Having Babies
In a recent post on her website, my wonderful daughter-in-law reflects on whether she and Darien will have children. The reflection was occasioned by our Iowa Thanksgiving where she saw all of her husband’s cousins having children (and I mean all, the only exceptions being those who are in college or younger). So Betsy compiles […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Children, Dashiell Hammett, Jane Austen, Maltese Falcon, Persuasion Comments closed
Rumi’s Poetry and Weddings
Rumi Rumi seems to be everywhere these days and has been for a while. This past weekend I was at the wedding of Micah Vote, the son of a family friend, and a Rumi poem served as the foundation of the ceremony. Here it is: May these vows and this marriage be blessed. May it […]
