Tag Archives: Thomas Hardy

Welcoming in May with a Dance

In Hardy, Mayday dancing is a way of connecting with ancient roots

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Poetry in the Face of Disaster

Even poetry seems inadequate in the face of a disaster like the Turkish-Syrian earthquake. But poetry is what we have.

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Song of Hope: The Night Cloud Is Hueing

With the passage of the Covid relief bill and increased vaccinations, Hardy’s “Song for Hope” seems appropriate.

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When Fiction Trumps Truth

Wednesday Writing last week for the New York Times’ “What Is Power?” series, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari argued that fiction is a more powerful force than truth in politics. I extend the discussion to literature (which Harari does not discuss) because of its reliance upon fabrication in the service of a higher understanding. Camus, […]

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Vets in WWI Documentary Do Not Age

Tuesday Last night Julia and I watched Peter Jackson’s extraordinary documentary about World War I in which he applied filmmaker’s magic to archival footage to create a sense of immediacy. By brightening dark shots and darkening overexposed ones, erasing scratches, evening out movement (World War I film was shot with hand-cranked cameras), turning long-shots into […]

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At Once a Voice Arose

Although Hardy was agnostic, “Darkling Thrush functions as a powerful Advent poem, with the longing for light in a world without faith.

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Why Poetry When Tsunamis Strike

Poetry seems inadequate to deal with large scale natural disasters but we turn to it anyway.

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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.

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Tess, More Relevant Than Ever

Students find Hardy’s “Tess” to be only too relevant In the age of Trump, Weinstein, and Roy Moore.

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