The late Harold Bloom longed to be a Samuel Johnson but never got there.
Tag Archives: T. S. Eliot
The Anxiety of Harold Bloom
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Alfred Lord Tennyson, Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom, Samuel Johnson Comments closed
T. S. Eliot on Resisting Tyrants
Columnist Gerson invokes “Murder in the Cathedral” to predict the impeachment of Donald Trump.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Donald Trump, Murder in the Cathedral, Nancy Pelosi, Trump impeachment, Trump Ukraine Scandal Comments closed
Come, Holy Spirit
Pentecost Sunday Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz uses the occasion of Pentecost to explore the nature of faith in his poem “Veni Creator.” Although the apostles may have been filled with the Holy Spirit, what about those of us who don’t experience tongues of flame? Here’s Luke’s description of moment (Acts 2:1-4): When the […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Gerontion", "Venite Creator", Brothers Karamazov, Czeslaw Milosz, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Grand Inquisitor, love, Pentecost Comments closed
Lent: The Air Heavy and Thick
Spiritual Sunday I share today a good Lenten poem by Denise Levertov where the poet finds herself in a funk, albeit not a dramatic funk. She’s experiencing neither a “dark night of the soul” nor a scorching wasteland desert, those extreme moments of crisis that have pushed people to revelation. (Today’s Gospel reading is Jesus’s […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Hound of Heaven", "Oblique Prayer", Denise Levertov, Francis Thompson, Lent, Mary Oliver, Waste Land Comments closed
Sen. Flake Is No Hamlet
Comparisons of Sen. Flake to Hamlet over the Brett Kavanaugh is an insult to Hamlet.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Hollow Men", Brett Kavanaugh hearing, Hamlet, Jeff Flake, Republican moderates, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Live in the Layers, Not on the Litter
Stanley Kunitz writes a variation of Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” that beautifully captures Yom Kippur themes.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Ash Wednesday", "Layers", Road Not Taken, Robert Frost, Stanley Kunitz, Yom Kippur Comments closed
Will Hollow Senators Stand Up to Trump?
If pro-choice Senate Republicans are like the hollow people described by Dante and T. S. Eliot, we can’t expect them to vote down an anti-abortion Supreme Court justice.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Hollow Men", Donald Trump, GOP, Republican moderates, Supreme Court, Susan Collins, Wasteland Comments closed
The Bloody Flesh Our Only Food
I share a Good Friday poem by T. S. Eliot and a Passover poem by Norman Finkelstein.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "East Coker", "Passover", "Telling", eucharist, Good Friday, Jesus, Moses, Norman Finkelstein Comments closed
Lit Frees Us from Our Mental Ghettos
In a fine “New Yorker” article, Shakespearean Stephen Greenblatt argues that Shakespeare was incapable to showing anything less than the full humanity of his characters, even the villains. He thereby liberates us from our “mental ghettos.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged anti-Semitism, cultural heritage, Humanities, Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare Comments closed
