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66Shelley's Frankenstein and the Human Bodies Exhibit
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, usually credited as the first true work of science fiction, stresses the fairly common themes of man's overweening pride, his error in overstepping boundaries, and the often...
3 comments68Life after teaching
Dear English Wench (are you a pirate or something?), I majored in English, and by your erudite commentary and precise, exquisite style (and lots of time to blog) I suspect that you, too, may be an English...
0 comments66Atwood's "Siren Song"
Margaret Atwood's "Siren Song" is a short poem that takes Homer's original Sirens from the myth and gives one of them a modern voice. Recall that Odysseus's men tie him to the ship preventing his hearing the...
2 comments51Life after teaching
Dear English Wench, I majored in English, and by your erudite commentary and precise, exquisite style (and lots of time to blog) I suspect that you, too, may be an English major. I recently resigned my position teaching eighth-grade speech and...
0 comments57Free digitized reads -- a plug
I discovered Manybooks,net four years ago when I was venturing outside the publisher's literature anthology in search of readings that would better suit my students' needs. The site is clean, only a few ads,...
1 comment51How to read a poem
Here's a method for reading a poem that I use. It works pretty well though poetry is "slippery" sometimes by nature. My LINKS page has helpful sites for terms and examples. Here's a terms site. Check out the...
1 comment68How do I love thee? -- not like that!
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a talented poet (Sonnets from the Portuguese), but her best known poem, the sonnet "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways," is not her best. I suspect it's her most popular...
0 comments60Ayn Rand's unpublished writing
I picked up an old, yellowed copy of The Early Rand (Signet, ed. Leonard Peikoff, 1984) and have thoroughly enjoyed reading from her early unpublished fiction. Peikoff and Rand were friends. In fact, she was influential in his move from studying...
3 comments58"1001" must reads -- oh really?
Or else what? Objectionable use of the word "must" it seems. Of course the editor, Peter Boxall, wants to raise our literary antennae because he knows we haven't read these books, not most of them, and so with...
4 comments56We'll miss you
. . . when you're dead. Of course we will. Rest assured. A. E. Housman's poem "Is my team ploughing?" presents a dialogue between two friends, young males, one living, one dead. The recently deceased has...
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