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 […]
Tag Archives: Paradise Lost
Read to Resist: An Introduction
Imagining Little Ocean’s Future
Looking for the literary significance of my latest grandchild, I turn to Walcott, Whitman, Masefield, Coleridge, and Byron. What emerges is a mystical seeker.
Apples That Taste of Earth and Song
Apples bring out poetic creativity, all the more so because the West has seen them as the forbidden fruit. I share here a selection of tempting apple poems.
Putin’s Seduction of Donald Trump
Think of Putin as Satan, Trump as Eve, and Adam as the GOP in a reenactment of Paradise Lost.
Milton: Sex as a Holy Sacrament
Spiritual Sunday My wife has been researching her Moravian past prior to a heritage trip to the Czech Republic and other important Moravian way stations in the trek to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where Julia’s ancestors landed. Some of these ancestors were missionaries who made their way to Grace Hill, Iowa, where Julia grew up. Julia reported […]
Retiring to the Garden of Eden
Stepping out of our U-Haul truck and into my mother’s wood, I felt I had entered Milton’s Garden of Eden.
Literature Has Paul Ryan’s Number
Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Chinua Achebe, John Milton, and Thomas Hardy see through men like departing Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.
Satan and Trump, Gifted Demagogues
Satan in “Paradise Lost” is a gifted leader who manipulates people for his own selfish ends–like a certain American president.