Obama, taking a cue from Kipling and maybe Edward Rowland Sill, bounced back in Tuesday’s debate.
Fantasy is nothing in and of itself but takes its character in opposition to an unsatisfactory reality.
Also posted in Keats (John), Lewis (C. S.), Shakespeare (William), Tolkien (J.R.R.) | Tagged "Lady of Shalott", "Lotos Eaters", "Passing of Arthur", Alfred Lord Tennyson, C. S. Lewis, Eve of St. Agnes, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lord of the Rings, Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare |
The death of a beloved cousin is throwing me into the primal pain described by Tennyson and Auden.
Peyton Manning and Roger Federer, in the twilight of their careers, bring to mind Tennyson’s Ulysses.
In “The Lady of Shalott,” beauty can’t stand up against the real world. By winning the European Cup, Spain showed us this doesn’t always have to be the case.
A discussion of Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses” led a group of senior citizens to conclude that it’s about a man who is experiencing difficulties transitioning into retirement.
Memorizing poetry used to be standard classroom practice and poetry was widely popular before the snobs came in.
Also posted in Coleridge (Samuel Taylor), Keats (John), Kilmer (Joyce), Kipling (Rudyard), Riley (James Whitcomb), Shelley (Percy), Wordsworth (William) | Tagged "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", "Ozymandias", "Trees", Alfred Lord Tennyson, Cleanth Brooks, Gunga Din, Joyce Kilmer, Memorizing poetry, Percy Shelley, Robert Penn Warren, Rudyard Kipling, Ulysses, William Wordsworth |
I share Tennyson’s wonderful poem “Crossing the Bar” in memory of an old Navy friend who died this past week.
The Sea Voyager, temporary home to St. Mary’s students after we were hit with a bad mold problem, left campus on Sunday, bringing to mind an Alfred, Lord Tennyson poem.
A wedding poem seems appropriate for June. Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s lovely “Marriage Morning” draws me, maybe because it captures some of the anxieties of the wedding day and not just the joys.
I understand more with each passing year what Tennyson means when he says his love “is vaster passion now” and how Hallam is thoroughly mixed with God and nature. Tennyson goes on to say that the moral will of humankind—the “living will” that is the best part of ourselves as a people—can finding footing on this spiritual rock. And that the living water that springs from this rock will “flow through our deeds and make them pure.”
Sports Saturday Something memorable occurred last Sunday in Dallas in addition to the Green Bay Packers bringing “Vince Lombardi home” in their Super Bowl victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers. Quarterback Aaron Rogers stepped out of the shadow of a legend. The literary equivalent that comes to mind is Homer’s Telemachus, but Rogers is Telemachus with [...]
Having taught British Fantasy Literature for the first time last semester, I need to think back on it before it becomes a distant memory. By reflecting publicly, I can share some of the insights I gained from the course. Two major things I learned are that (1) fantasy is an oppositional genre—by which I [...]
Also posted in Andersen (Hans Christian), Barrie (J. M.), Carroll (Lewis), Chaucer (Geoffrey), Coleridge (Samuel Taylor), Dickens (Charles), Grahame (Kenneth), Grimm Brothers, Haggard (Rider), Keats (John), Kipling (Rudyard), Rossetti (Christina), Shakespeare (William), Sir Gawain Poet, Tolkien (J.R.R.) | Tagged "Kubla Khan", "La Belle Dame sans Merci", "Lady of Shallot", Alfred Lord Tennyson, Alice in Wonderland Alice through the Looking Glass, Carl Jung, Charles Dickens, Christina Rossetti, fantasy, Geoffrey Chaucer, Goblin Market, Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen, Hard Times, Hero with a Thousand Faces, Idylls of the King, J. R. R. Tolkien, James Barrie, John Keats, Joseph Campbell, Jungle Books, Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carol, Man and His Symbols, Midsummer Night's Dream, Rider Haggard, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Rudyard Kipling, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, She, teaching, The Lord of the Rings, The Wind in the Willows, William Shakespeare |
The Democrats’ “shellacking” at the hands of the Republicans last week (the description is President Obama’s) has me thinking about Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade. But perhaps not in the way that you think. Tennyson’s memorable poem commemorated the insane charge by the British cavalry against Russian machine guns at Balaclava in [...]
Sports Saturday Professional football is a super violent sport and its 16-game season is a war of attrition. One never knows, from one week to the next, what team will have its Super Bowl hopes derailed by critical injuries. For a while this year, everyone was certain that the NFC would send either the New [...]
Thinking about my dead son in this Christmas season brings to mind Alfred Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam, the lengthy poem that he wrote over the course of 17 years lamenting the death of his close friend Arthur Henry Hallam. Hallam was a young man when he died unexpectedly of a cerebral hemorrhage, and Tennyson describes [...]
“But maybe stories and poetry can help open our minds to possibilities that are very real but extremely hard to see; and in that sense, they can be very practical.” – Rachel Kranz in a response to yesterday’s post I love the two responses to yesterday’s post (from the two major women in my life) [...]
Also posted in Behbahani (Simin), Nafisi (Azar), Stowe (Harriet Beecher) | Tagged Alfred Lord Tennyson, Azar Nafisi, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herbert Marcuse, Martin Luther King, politics, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Simin Belbahani, Ulysses, Uncle Tom's Cabin |
In spending the last two weeks discussing how poetry can come to our aid in a season of death, I have been exploring how poetry responds to its greatest test. Death and dying can trigger our deepest fears, generate panic, denial and anger, prompt us to question everything we believe in, and send on frantic [...]
