Emily A. Bernard Jackson asks this question concerning Byron in a TLS review of Roderick Beaton’s Byron’s War: Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution . It’s a “troublesome” question for Byron scholars: “Byron was certainly political: he maintained a lively interest . . . . Continue Reading »
In an essay on “The Government of the Tongue,” the late Seamus Heaney drew on the incident of the woman caught in adultery to explain the purpose of poetry: “The drawing of those characters [by Jesus] is like poetry, a break with the usual life but not an absconding from it. . . . . Continue Reading »
Following up Agamben’s discussion: Robert Durling and Ronald Martinez ( Time and the Crystal: Studies in Dante’s Rime petrose , 269-70) explain the hexameral structure of the sestina by reference to both philosophical and biblical sources: “In both form and content, Dante’s . . . . Continue Reading »
Whatever happened to poetry? many wonder. Those who wonder probably don’t realize that a lot of poetry continues to be written. On the other hand, they may be perfectly aware that a lot of what’s written passes itself off as poetry, but they deny that it qualifies. And they have a . . . . Continue Reading »
In his review of Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing , Stephen Greenblatt connects the theme of “nothing” with “noting” and “noting” with eavesdropping, and from there suggests that Shakespeare’s plays have to be understood in the light of . . . . Continue Reading »
Harold Segel’s The Walls Behind the Curtain: East European Prison Literature, 1945-1990 shows the ingenuity of poets and writers in responding to circumstance and lack. For some poets, prison forced them back to the origins of poetry, back to oral composition: “When writing tools are . . . . Continue Reading »
The latest issue of The New Yorker published a series of prayers that Flanner O’Connor put into a journal beginning in early 1946 when she studied at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Several describe her distance from God, and the way her ego prevents her from knowing God as she would like: . . . . Continue Reading »
Seamus Heaney, the great Irish poet of mud and muck, is dead. No better tribute than to cite a few of his many haunting lines, these from his poem “Anahorish”: My ‘place of clear water,’ the first hill in the world where springs washed into the shiny grass and . . . . Continue Reading »
I offer some reflections on the theological import of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice at the Trinity House site. . . . . Continue Reading »
In an essay on Tennyson, John Stuart Mill insists that great poets must be great thinkers: “Every great poet, every poet who has extensively or permanently influenced mankind, has been a great thinker;—has had a philosophy, though perhaps he did not call it by that name;—has had . . . . Continue Reading »
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