Monthly Archives: September 2007

Running in Circles

1. The confusion comes from wanting everything. And then one confronts “thou shalt not want” – and what is to be made of that? Does God give, or insist we drop demands?It is never clear one way or another, so it must be wisdom. Life demands action, even action for wisdom. And if it feels

Hiding

this is a draft – testing, testing, 1, 2, 3…Thoughtful people want puzzles, but not superficial ones. Riddles are fun – what is at stake now is far more serious.So serious that to express the truth directly is to insult the thought of the reader. Of course the reader has thought like you have! How

Computers and Education

1. “The Computer Delusion,” by Todd Oppenheimer: remarks below will cite this article 2. This seems to describe a considerable number of blog posts, as well as student essays: In Endangered Minds, Jane Healy wrote of an English teacher who could readily tell which of her students’ essays were conceived on a computer. “They don’t

On Blake’s "The Little Boy Lost" and "The Little Boy Found"

The Little Boy Lost William Blake “Father! father! where are you going? O do not walk so fast. Speak, father, speak to your little boy, Or else I shall be lost.” The night was dark, no father was there; The child was wet with dew; The mire was deep, & the child did weep, And

Reminder To Self: Avoid Being a Music Critic

It’s hard to trust your ears. I think I have to figure out a method for describing exactly what I’m hearing when I write about music, and be very careful about underestimating how much a name can impact the way I view things: The recrimination directed at the critics who had been duped was both

Reconsidering Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73

The earlier discussion of Sonnet 73 A suggestion of Helen Vendler’s regarding Sonnet 116 has made me rethink what I said earlier about 73. In 116, Vendler argues, Shakespeare’s speaker is struggling to refute a notion of love that all too many beautiful people have today – why can’t love alter when it alteration finds?

In Exile: On Yeats’ "Sailing To Byzantium"

I owe two people whose names I don’t know fully for their comments and thoughts on this poem – without them, this commentary might have been even more cryptic and misleading. Sailing to Byzantium W.B. Yeats I That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees –

Links, 9/7/2007

I don’t know if you’ll get any use out of this, but the Chronicle of Higher Ed. has a blog that blogs about blogs. I found a lot of the entries too tedious or too trendy, but did leave a comment on one of them that is probably out-of-place (I actually didn’t mean to be

Suspicion

The very lushness of trees in this area creates an interplay of green and shadow far darker than anything the sky can produce.The sky can be cloudy at night, but even then there is a smudging of light, and one always wonders about the lights beyond. Shades of darkness seem to be purely an earthly