What if the fallen statue in Percy Shelley’s killer sonnet “Ozymandias” is a vampire? And if so, what is it a vampire of? This is the question that sprang fresh into my mind as I listened, rapt, to Piya Pal Lapinski lecture on “The Vampire Isles of Greece: Byron, Revenants, and Archaeology in the Ottoman […]
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For the Blake-Shelley chapter draft in progress, which also includes Derek Jarman. On a hot July day just after my visit to Blake’s cottage at Felpham, the spirits of three related artists – Blake, Shelley, and Jarman – strike me, Milton-in-the-tarsus style, right outside the St Pancras tube as I’m hustling to the British Library. […]
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Best political news of the year: Andy Burnham, next-UK-Prime-Minister-presumptive, was an English major! As described by his former Cambridge professor, John Mullan (author of the excellent book The Artful Dickens), Burnham was a voracious and curious reader – and a fan of Philip Larkin. And, as seen in the viral “eyelash” moment, he’s still got […]
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Decorah No Kings, Saturday, October 18, 2025. Crowd numbers: At least 1,000, estimated. The courthouse lawn was full. Weather: Warm, clear blue sky, golden October light. Signs: Cleanup on Aisle 47! No Kings or Drama Queens (with pouting Trump in 18th-c. wig) No King but King Jesus (on a stroller) I’m One Year Old and I’m Already […]
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And Urizen Read in his book of brass in sounding tones Listen O Daughters to my voice Listen to the Words of Wisdom So shall [ye] govern over all let Moral Duty tune your tongue But be your hearts harder than the nether millstone To bring the shadow of Enitharmon beneath our wondrous tree That […]
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Since we’re apparently being held captive as a nation to what writers were thinking in 1788, let’s go back to 1792, when Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. What might Wollstonecraft, landmark English feminist, say about the not-entirely-unexpected but still devastating decision today by the Supreme Court, 6-3, to overturn Roe […]
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To many of us, the year 2020 felt like the first draft of apocalypse. The COVID-19 pandemic claimed nearly two million dead worldwide. Lockdown life drove minds and economies around the bend. George Floyd was murdered by a policeman on a Minneapolis sidewalk. Brexit disaster flapped down on rusty wings to roost on the once-United […]
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Colleagues and I have been sharing lots of ideas about how to help students cope with the ambient uncertainty of life and futures in the pandemic – heightened by the uncertainty of election day today, all of which can create anxiety it’s hard to see beyond. So to the excellent resources here (thanks to Luther’s […]
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Like soap punctures the fatty envelope around its own RNA strand, coronavirus punctures our human envelopes of comfort and forces rethinking, in so many ways. One is metaphor (x “is” y) and simile (x is “like or as” y), which guides us – for better or worse – in comparing unlike things, and thus helps […]
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