Where are the Heroes?

Many years ago, as a new graduate student, I enrolled in a Milton seminar. Our focus for the entire course was to be Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost. Fewer and […]

A View from a Sabbatical

In another blog, I’ve admitted to keeping journals at different periods of my life. I’ve done this to develop as a writer, not so much to record events. My life […]

Are We Teaching the Real Subject?

In another blog elsewhere, I have argued that when it comes to teaching writing, educators sometimes play the blame game. No matter what level of writing they are working with, […]

It’s Hard Being Easy

Looks can be deceiving. I remember watching a heavy metal band acting as though the real power in their guitars was coming through their mighty strums. They’d grimace and reach […]

Pity and Imitation

Today I thought again about Plato and Aristotle and their views on poetry. Plato, of course, rejected poetry as mere imitation. Since it could not, as a copy of a […]