January 26, 2012
The Widening Circle: King, Gandhi, Christ
Morality is pesky. Is our notion of right and wrong just a function of socialization? Or is there something cosmic, objective, external about it, as constant as the speed […]
January 10, 2012
Two Philosophical Poets: On T. S. Eliot and Kay Ryan
The past hundred years have witnessed, in the English-speaking world, the emergence of two major philosophical poets: T. S. Eliot and Kay Ryan. While they certainly aren’t the only ones, […]
January 5, 2012
And Shakespeare Begat Shakespeare
The only kind of sexual intercourse we “know” Shakespeare had was heterosexual—with the wife who bore his twins, Judith and Hamnet. In the absence of genetic samples, though, we […]
January 4, 2012
The Virtues of Bad Writing
What we go to when we go to literature is an exit. Even social realism is escapist: We escape from ourselves into another self, that of the character. Readers like […]
January 2, 2012
The Art that Bears Repeating
Entertaining toddlers is easy. It’s the same damned thing over and over again. Within that framework of repetition, and the expectation it generates and satisfies, you can vary things how […]
December 28, 2011
Blog Post: Two Revisitings
I read over my first posts to see if the remove of time could add any insight. It’s like sitting on a “finished” poem to see if it’s still good […]
December 27, 2011
Metaeuphoria: In Praise of Metaphor
Of course, you have been thinking since that last post, well of course you can “believe” these myths and Gods after you reduce them to symbols and metaphors. Your “belief” […]
December 26, 2011
Mythistory; or Against Literalism
The last post, which ended with a note how myth and scripture are a foundation of literature (and, I should add, art and music), got me thinking about the preservation […]
December 21, 2011
Hitchens as a Man of Letters
The indifferent are not enemies of literature. They don’t value literature highly enough to do violence to it. The true enemy of literature is passionate about literature; he or she […]
December 14, 2011
What’s in a Name?
The controversy continues regarding The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, edited by Rita Dove. The barest outline of the issue is as follows: Helen Vendler, in the New York […]