This was to be my final letter; the one in which I told you what it’s like for me, as a scholar of 16th and 17th century English literature, to visit Stratford-on-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare. I hardly mentioned Shakespeare in my dissertation; but my connection with his writing goes back to childhood. Being able…
Tag: Poetry
London Letters #2: “O for a Muse of Fire”
Yesterday I walked past Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. It was intense. Just walking past it. I’ve been in London now for over a week. I’ve seen a bunch of the tourist things you’re supposed to see, and not seen others. I saw the treasures of the Sutton Hoo excavation at the British Museum. I saw all…
Sticking Your Nose in a Book
Do you think books mind when we read them? Here they are carrying on with their lives, being beautiful or terrible according to how they were written, and we come along and literally stick our noses into their business. There are some people—scholars, philosophers, authors—who treat books as if they were alive. I once attended…
What is Teaching?
So. I have a lot of thoughts on the subject of education. Sometimes I’m in the mood to take one idea and just poke at it, but at present I’m more of a mind to go through a bunch of different ideas too quickly to do any of them justice. Ready? Teaching is… Item the…
Whitman’s Thrush
Walt Whitman at 202 By Adam Katz I guess most school-age kids read “O Captain, my Captain” at some point. Looking back at it now, it’s a poem you have to read quickly, I think. The line “O heart! heart! heart! / O the bleeding drops of red” does not really admit slowing down and…
You Don’t Look a Day Over 200
By Erika Grumet It’s birthday time here. Mine is this week, although I am nowhere near 200, but we’ll also be celebrating Walt Whitman’s 202nd birthday with this weekend’s episode of The Ivory Tower Boiler Room. I think it’s hard to grow up where I did on Long Island and not have at least a …