Spiritual Sunday
Thanks to all of you who wrote this past week following the twin blows of my uncle’s death and news of the severity of Alan’s latest cancer diagnosis. The discussion in response to Thursday’s post about which goes deeper, self or love, brought to the periphery of my mind a catechism in which every [...]
Amanda Root as Anne Elliott
Film Friday
One must show a great deal of sensitivity in how one films a Jane Austen heroine accepting a marriage proposal. That’s because the author never shows us the acceptances directly. Although I am generally not a great fan of filmed versions of Jane Austen novels, I have to tip my [...]
Since I am vacationing in Maine and spent time yesterday with my favorite cousin, who is a huge Edward Arlington Robinson fan, I devote a post to the state’s greatest poet. Whenever I visit Dan Bates in Gardiner, we have to visit Robinson’s grave and look at his house.
My favorite Robinson poem is “Eros Turannos” [...]
Francois Boucher, mid 18th-century
As June is the month for weddings (Julia and I were married June 8), I will be looking at a wedding poem and a wedding play this week: Edmund Spenser’s gorgeous Epithalamion and Shakespeare’s magical Midsummer Night’s Dream. Writing about his own upcoming wedding, Spenser is so exuberant that he could be [...]
Soledad Villamil (Irene), Ricardo Darin (Esposito)
Film Friday
Warning: The following essay contains spoilers.
Today I sing the praises of The Secret in Their Eyes, the Juan Jose Campanella film from Argentina that won the 2009 Foreign Film Oscar. It is more than a gripping film about investigating a murder, although it is also that. It is a [...]
You will not be surprised to hear that poetry played a big role in my wedding 37 years ago, on June 8, 1973. The outdoor wedding occurred shortly after Carleton’s Commencement ceremony (our good friends John Colman and Anne Smith got married shortly before). Three days earlier, after an intense week finishing up my final essays, [...]
Giotto, The Last Supper
I can think of no better poet to move us into Holy Week than George Herbert, a 17th century Anglican rector who wrestled mightily with a sense of his unworthiness.
In his poetry, Herbert is determined to be as honest about his doubts as possible. He is not a facile [...]
I promised this post on Robert Frost’s “Birches” in the event that we have an ice storm. I don’t know yet whether we will have one, but we had frozen rain for much of the night, and as I write this (Wednesday morning) we are being attacked by a blizzard. So if I don’t arrange [...]
Brandon/Rickman, Marianne/Winslett
First of all, a happy birthday to Jane Austen (thanks to my mother for pointing this out). Jane would have been 234 today.
My students have been bothered by the Marianne-Brandon marriage that concludes Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, and I’m inclined to agree with them. Kat Vander Wende reasonably pointed out that [...]
When my wife and I leave the house in the morning, I will sometimes call out to her, “One kiss, my bonnie sweetheart” and we will embrace before going our separate ways. I suspect you recognize the line, which is from one of the English language’s most beloved poems, Alfred Noyes’s “The Highwayman.” I write [...]
