Tuesday For weeks now, we here in Tennessee and other parts of the American south have been gripped by what they’re calling a “flash drought.” Abnormally high temperatures and lack of any precipitation have been “cracking farm soil, drying up ponds and raising the risk of wildfires.” We’re far from the worst extreme weather event […]
Looking for the literary significance of my latest grandchild, I turn to Walcott, Whitman, Masefield, Coleridge, and Byron. What emerges is a mystical seeker.
I celebrate the water once again running through our house with a Coleridge passage.
John Gatta’s “Spirit of Place in American Literary Culture” explains why we find certain places, in nature and in civilization, to be infused with spirit.
While watch the solar eclipse, I conflated two poetic passages, one from “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the other from “The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence.”
This poem about the Good Samaritan by Australian working class author Henry Lawson depicts the Samaritan as a figure from the outback.
A student with Crohn’s disease found a kindred soul in Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner.
The water crisis experienced by the residents of Flint, Michigan is described in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Now they just need a governor who, like the mariner, is genuinely penitent.
George Herbert poetry is admirable in the way he wrestles with his spiritual doubts. He may owe a debt to “The Book of Job,” where we also see such wrestling.
