Rightwing groups have started attacking empathy itself, which literature fosters. Ayn Rand would approve but not Shakespeare.
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Tag Archives: William Shakespeare
Rosh Hashanah: The Light You Seek Hides in Your Belly
This Piercy Rosh Hashanah poem builds a poem about forgiveness and renewal from the image of a dark moon.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Head of the Year", Marge Piercy, Midsummer Night's Dream, Rosh Hashanah Comments closed
Harry Kane as Henry V Redux
In which I compare England transcendent goal scorer Harry Kane to Shakespeare’s Henry V.
What to Make of the Resurgence of Macho
With Pete Hegseth’s over-the-top exhibition of macho, I look at the history of literary cuckold jokes, which reveal the anxieties of insecure men.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged As You Like It, Canterbury Tales, Christopher Marlowe, Country Wife, cuckold jokes, cuckolds, cuckservatives, Doctor Faustus, Donald Trump, Geoffrey Chaucer, Miller's Tale, Othello, Pete Hegseth, William Wycherley Comments closed
How Sports Spurred My Literary Imagination
In which I examine my longtime relationship with sports, along with some of its literary associations.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Ties", "To Be of Use", Brian Gottfried, Dabney Stuart, Jean Renoir, Julius Caesar, Marge Piercy, Roger Federer, Rules of the Game, Sports, sprezzatura, tennis, Tobias Wilson-Bates Comments closed
The Tempest and Our Own Coup Attempts
We can see our current electoral politics, and the threats to social order, in Shakespeare’s “Tempest.”
The Loneliness of the Tyrant
Trump is a Richard III figure. A Robert Hayden poem tells us how to counter him.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Donald Trump, Richard III, Robert Hayden, Stephen Colbert Comments closed