March 2018
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I came across this poem because the high school literature discussion that my wife and I run was reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame (otherwise known as Notre-Dame du Paris). I wanted to find some Hugo poem and this one caught my fancy. It is very romantic, with a wistful nostalgia for the imagined innocence…
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Today begins Holy Week, for Western Christians, anyway…actually I'm not sure how many Protestants use the term–I don't remember hearing it when I was growing up. Instead of rattling on about what I'm reading and current events and such, I'm just going to post a few remarks from Simone Weil. You may or may not…
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LITTLE ORPHANT ANNIE Little Orphant Annie’s come to our house to stay, An’ wash the cups an’ saucers up, an’ brush the crumbs away, An’ shoo the chickens off the porch, an’ dust the hearth, an’ sweep, An’ make the fire, an’ bake the bread, an’ earn her board-an’-keep; An’ all us other children, when…
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I said last week that the big contemporary corporate or government employer is "not meant to produce free citizens. And it doesn't want them." Later I started thinking about how different our biggest corporations–Google and the like–are from their counterparts of thirty or forty or fifty years ago, and yet how similar. Once upon a time there was much…
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NOTE TO J. ALFRED PRUFROCK I just dared to eat a really big peach as ripe as it could be and I have on a pair of plaid shorts and a blue tee shirt with a hole in it and little rivers of juice are now running down my chin and wrist and dripping onto…
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After posting Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" a couple of weeks ago, I found myself remembering other bits and pieces of his poetry, so I got out a couple of old textbooks and went looking for them. Principal among these fragments was this, which used to be widely quoted: Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The…
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LE ROI S’AMUSE Jove gazed On woven mazes Of patterned movement as the atoms whirled. His glance turned Into dancing, burning Colour-gods who rushed upon that sullen world, Waking, re-making, exalting it anew – Silver and purple, shrill-voiced yellow, turgid crimson, and virgin blue. Jove stared On overbearing And aching splendour of the naked…
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The world is changing. Those words recur several times in The Lord of the Rings, and they keep recurring to me about these times and this country, and in particular over the past few weeks about the gun control debate. It seems to me that a slow transformation in the way Americans think about their country,…
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Week 1: Meet the Beatles (The Beatles) Week 2: Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash (The Pogues) Week 3: Waving, Not Drowning (Rupert Hine) Week 4: Fragments of a Rainy Season (John Cale) Week 5: Rain Dogs (Tom Waits) Week 6: SHEL Week 7: Something Else (The Kinks) Week 8: Hi-Fi In Focuse (Chet Atkins) Week 9: Slow Turning (John Hiatt) Week 10: Swagger (The Blue…
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DEUS, EGO AMO TE O God, I love thee, I love thee— Not out of hope of heaven for me Nor fearing not to love and be In the everlasting burning. Thou, thou, my Jesus, after me Didst reach thine arms out dying, For my sake sufferedst nails and lance, Mocked and marred countenance, Sorrows…
Light On Dark Water 