Whenever I’m asked, “Why read Hopkins?” I have no clue how to answer. I stumble through something about his view of language with his elaborate internal rhymes and chiming of words influenced by Welsh poetry. Or maybe I turn to the solace of his line that the “mind has mountains.” Or the decade and more that … More All Shall Be Well
Today is the 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht. I’ve been thinking about this lately with my work on Primo Levi’s writing and a few other projects I’m involved in. Levi introduces his Holocaust memoir, If This Is a Man, with the poem, “Shema.” Named after the first Hebrew word of the prayer, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is … More Primo Levi’s “Shema”
We just had the annual conference for the Society for Literature Science and the Arts in Atlanta. Haven’t heard of SLSA before? Here’s the rundown: The Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts welcomes colleagues in the sciences, engineering, technology, computer science, medicine, the social sciences, the humanities, the arts, and independent scholars and artists. SLSA … More Primo Levi and Creative Chemistry
Whenever I’m asked, “Why read Hopkins?” I have no clue how to answer. I stumble through something about his view of language with his elaborate internal rhymes and chiming of words influenced by Welsh poetry. Or maybe I turn to the solace of his line that the “mind has mountains.” Or the decade and more that … More All Shall Be Well
The reason to read Blake and Dickinson and Freud and Dickens is not to become more cultivated or more articulate… The best reason to read them is to see if they may know you better than you know yourself. You may find your own suppressed and rejected thoughts flowing back to you with an “alienated … More Ten Books that Formed Me
