Hunkered on a funeral urn, he howls into the void. Howls? Is that mouth open or closed? Is that even a mouth? In the dim gallery, walls dappled all around with trees, I circle him like John Keats at the Grecian urn. We’re in this forest together now. Dug out of the earth in Spong […]
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It’s not often that a movie lives up to its press, but “The Favourite” does – and more. It also reanimates a story coming to life in front of me, right now, in the first six-volume history of England written by a woman, published around the American Revolution and resting on my desk in the […]
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“All the things that are wrong in the world seem conquered by a library’s simple unspoken promise: here I am, please tell me your story; here is my story, please listen.” – Susan Orlean, The Library Book — Is this the year we finally learn to distinguish story from myth, and lies from both of […]
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I couldn’t be happier that my essay “Gain Experience!: Literature, Travel, and Life” (echoing Mary Wollstonecraft’s famous advice) is forthcoming in Engaging the Age of Jane Austen, edited by Bridget Draxler and Danielle Spratt (University of Iowa Press, 2019). I’m so grateful to Bridget and Danielle for this opportunity. In the essay, I share particular […]
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Two men in tunics and hose, their backs to me, lean on the wall of a castle balcony and look down at something happening on the other side. A slim tree leafs out elegantly to the left. They’re relaxed, intent, faces totally hidden. What’s going on down there, in this picture’s entirely private world? Framed […]
Read moreThis weekend I read Tara Westover’s new memoir Educated in one sitting.
Read moreSen. Elizabeth Warren sits at her desk, coffee cup and phone nearby, holding a 500-page chunk of paper — the Republican tax bill — she was given an hour to read before the vote. “So,” she begins, “here it is Friday night, and I just want to give you an idea of how the Republican […]
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Cross-posted from Luther’s “Ideas and Creations” community blog. Main 218 is my favorite classroom for several reasons: like my campus office and my dining room at home, it has red walls. I’ve added some National Poetry Month posters to the walls over time, so the décor feels a little personalized. But most of all, it’s […]
Read moreWednesday, November 9, 2016: 7:30 a.m. I have a lot of thoughts but for now, as a college professor, will confine myself to this: What happens now to education, in a country where everyone claims to value it but our new president-elect, and those who voted for him, have just rejected its actual results? I’m […]
Read moreReading Craig Lambert’s new book Shadow Work for research on my own manuscript, my thoughts went immediately to faculty, at my college and elsewhere. “We are living in the most prosperous era in human history,” Lambert writes, “and prosperity supposedly brings leisure. Yet, quietly, subtly, even furtively, new tasks have infiltrated our days, nibbling off […]
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