MOOCs–Massive Open On-line Courses–can never teach lit as well as small classes.
Scott Bates, cheerleading for solar power and electric cars.
The Oklahoma tornado recalls literature’s most famous tornado in “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”
Marilynne’s Robinson’s novel “Home” captures some of my own experience returning home.
Two young student athletes in my Intro to Literature took important lessons from “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and a Wendell Berry poem.
Longfellow reenacts the Pentecost in this reflection up his changing relationship to nature.
With a lackluster NBA playoffs, I find myself thrown back on my memories. A Fairchild poem understands how I feel.
Depressed by the stock market soaring while the economy limps along? Here’s a Great Depression revenge fantasy.
“The Great Gatsby” is about fantasizing. Baz Luhrmann’s new film appears to understand this well.
Sophocles and Homer present compelling cases for granting full funeral rights to the Boston Marathon bomber.
Posted in Homer, Sophocles | Tagged Ajax, Antigone, Boston Marathon bombing, funerals, Homer, Iliad, Odyssey, Sophocles, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Terrorism |
I gave a talk last night to Leonardtown, Maryland’s Friends of the Library about—surprise!–“How Literature Can Change Your Life.” It was a busy day, what with writing the talk and turning in final grades and going to one last committee meeting and attending a retirement party (for which I wrote a bit of doggerel) and [...]
Our Commencement was jolted by a reading of Martin Espada’s “Imagine the Angels of Bread.”
Ivan Karamazov attacks those Christians who rationalize suffering by finding a higher purpose in it.
Like e.e. cummings’ Bill Bill, Warriors guard Stephen Curry shoots onetwothreefourfive baskets. Just like that.
Pay attention and you’ll see the magic in graduation.
My 15 minutes: during Slovenia’s 1995 V-E Day celebration I read Walt Whitman to a national television audience.
“The Ballad of Bathtub Gin” looks back to the days of Appalachian moonshine.
The predominant readers of 18th century novels were young readers trying to find answers to the questions facing them.
The early novel appealed to the young, the ambitious, the mobile, and the urban.
Story-truth superior to happening-truth, in war stories and in Bible.
Kevin Durant is like Akhilleus. In more ways than one.
Important though it was, “To Kill a Mockingbird” was also a white liberal fantasy.
People who think a modern Beowulf can come in and fix our political problems are delusional.
Celebrate May Day with this passage from “Grapes of Wrath,” which emphasizes how vital work is to our sense of self respect.
Remembering my son’s death brings to mind a beautiful elegy by John Dryden.
Willa Cather and Lucille Clifton were quoted in our end-of-the-year awards ceremony last week.
Mary Oliver finds hope even for those weighed down by the thorn of depression.
The NFL draft perfectly exemplifies Alexander Pope’s passage about hope.
A new political science text shows that Jane Austen has a shrewd understanding of game theory.
Conservative defenses of Bush’s record on counter-terrorism–”setting aside 9-11…” –call for Jane Austen’s exquisite irony.
Sometimes, like Mr. Hardcastle in “She Stoops to Conquer,” one needs a break from the world’s news.
