I was rereading Rudyard Kipling’s entertaining story The Man Who Would Be King the other day, and it got me thinking about some of the Tea Party candidates for Senate, like Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky. Allow me to explain. Kipling’s 1888 work is about two enterprising good-for-nothings, Dravot and Carnehan, […]
Tag Archives: politics
The Tea Partiers Who Would Be Senators
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Man Who Would Be King, Rudyard Kipling, Tea Party Comments closed
Our New Poet Laureate
W. S. Merwin A very fine poet, W. S. Merwin, has been named our new poet laureate. Because he was a friend of my former colleague Lucille Clifton, I was able to meet Merwin when he visited St. Mary’s College of Maryland. He lives in Hawaii and has been working hard to preserve their rain […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Emigre", "Prospective Immigrants Please Note", Adrienne Rich, Immigration, W. S. Merwin Comments closed
Christopher Hitchens, Literary Bully
I confess to bristling when I hear the name Christopher Hitchens.The intellectual provocateur has been in the news recently, first for publishing his memoirs and second for contracting throat cancer.Although he is smart and well read, he has always struck me as a self-righteous intellectual bully, one who is more interested in toppling icons than […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Christopher Hitchens, Darkness at Noon, David Brooks, George Orwell, Graham Greene, Hitch-22, How Green Was My Valley, Plato, Republic, Richard Llewellyn, Wilfred Owen Comments closed
A Poem for Heroes and Mass Murderers
Since the World Cup is underway in South Africa, I watched Clint Eastwood’s Invictus last week, about the 1995 World Cup Rugby Tournament held in South Africa. Based on a true story, the film notes that, while in prison, Nelson Mandela, like many black South Africans, would root against the South African rugby team, beloved […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Invictus", Alfred Lord Tennyson, Apartheid, Clint Eastwood, Faisal Shahzad, John Milton, Nelson Mandela, Paradise Lost, Sports, Timothy McVeigh, Ulysses, William Ernest Henley Comments closed
Freeing Oneself from Past Trauma
Soledad Villamil (Irene), Ricardo Darin (Esposito) Film Friday Warning: The following essay contains spoilers. Today I sing the praises of The Secret in Their Eyes, the Juan Jose Campanella film from Argentina that won the 2009 Foreign Film Oscar. It is more than a gripping film about investigating a murder, although it is also that. […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Film, Juan Jose Campanella, love, Mystery, Secrets in Their Eyes Comments closed
The Grand Illusion that We Fight Over
Film Friday I wrote Tuesday and Wednesday about Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” and the fences that divide us, both externally and internally. Today I write about one of the great humanistic films about dividing lines: Jean Renoir’s 1937 classic La Grande Illusion. The final scene of the film reminds me of “Mending Wall.” Two World […]
After the Mess, Can Obama Be Fortinbras?
I’ve been thinking recently about how every Shakespearean tragedy concludes with a restoration of order. The stage may be strewn with corpses and the spectator’s heart may have broken into a thousand little pieces, but (as though to provide some reassurance) someone steps forward at the end to set things straight. In Hamlet it is […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Capitalism, Deregulation, Environment, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Nature, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Interpreting Lit Makes for Better Citizens
Eugene Robinson Our Commencement speaker two weeks ago was the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner and one of my favorite columnists. He delivered a message to our graduates with which I fervently agree: THINK! Robinson told us that he is tired of seeing politics conducted with bumper sticker simplicity. The real problems […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Critical thinking, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, William Shakespeare Comments closed
