Despite being a voracious reader, I’ve always been intimidated by Medieval and Renaissance literature. So I had somehow gotten this far in my life without reading Paradise Lost. But in preparation for teaching a British Literature class this fall, I decided it was time to overcome my fear. In the Christian Guide to the Classics series, I discovered that Leland Ryken had written a guide for Paradise Lost which I found invaluable during my reading. It broke the text up into manageable sections and provided a summary of the plot that helped me follow along. Additionally, the questions and ideas that Ryken explored made the book more fascinating…
I am officially one week into my vacation! A brief recap of my adventures thus far: Reading Economic Science and the Austrian Method, American Gods, and I Capture the Castle Watching the second American Sherlock Holmes, She’s the Man, and half of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries Making good progress on my summer tan and almost getting burned Experiencing the craziness of Houston traffic Spending time at the pool and the beach Eating some delicious fish tacos while overlooking the Gulf Learning about pirates at the Moody Gardens Trying to make sense of what’s going as “art” at the Houston Contemporary Art Museum Walking about 3 miles in…
I’ve gotten behind with doing my favorite music videos…sorry about that! I am leaving tomorrow to visit a friend in Houston for a few weeks. Besides a bit of work and a few other projects, this is mostly going to be a relaxing/fun vacation. That mostly means hanging out at the beach and doing a lot of reading, which I am really looking forward to! I may fit in some blogging too…but we’ll have to see. I will try to keep up with doing some music videos and some other random things. Considering that Bastille ranks so highly for me,…
I dwell in Possibility – A fairer House than Prose – More numerous of Windows – Superior – for Doors – Of Chambers as the Cedars – Impregnable of eye – And for an everlasting Roof The Gambrels of the Sky – Of Visitors – the fairest – For Occupation – This – The spreading wide my narrow Hands To gather Paradise – – Emily Dickinson
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!–and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons? I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys….
Amber husk
fluted with gold,
fruit on the sand
marked with a rich grain,
treasure
spilled near the shrub-pines
to bleach on the boulders:
your stalk has caught root
among wet pebbles
and drift flung by the sea
and grated shells
and split conch-shells.
Beautiful, wide-spread,
fire upon leaf,
what meadow yields
so fragrant a leaf
as your bright leaf?
– H.D.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
– Robert Frost
Between Walls
the back wings
of the
hospital where
nothing
will grow lie
cinders
In which shine
the broken
pieces of a green
bottle
– William Carlos Williams
