Here are some more quotes from Victor Klemperer’s journal I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1933-1941: March 20, 1938: The last few weeks have been the most wretched of our life so far. The immense act … Continue reading →
…in the English-speaking world—and perhaps the world as a whole—has quite a backstory: Frye, who was living in Baltimore at the time, wrote the poem in 1932. She had never written any poetry, but the plight of a young German … Continue reading →
I have continued to read Victor Klemperer’s two-volume diary I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years (I’ve written about the book before, here and here). Klemperer was in an unusual position in Germany. Although born a Jew, … Continue reading →
Yesterday I had an ant infestation, mostly those large ones that can move very fast, although there were a couple of teeny tiny ones as well. They came out of nowhere—I couldn’t see where they were entering—and seemed evenly distributed … Continue reading →
During a 1976 interview, author and poet James Dickey said this about poets and celebrities pronouncing on politics: INTERVIEWER Some of your detractors have mentioned the fact that they felt that you should use your influence, your place in the … Continue reading →
Emily Phillips had a way with words, and she used it to write her own obituary, which has gone viral [hat tip: Althouse]. I bet we can get a good idea of Phillips’ personality by reading it: It pains me … Continue reading →
[Part I here.] Whatever was I talking about when I said that the lyrics of “Walk Away, Renee” were poetry? You might think the lyrics aren’t so special; just the usual rock pap. But bear with me and see whether … Continue reading →
Recently I wrote a post that featured the Yeats poem “The Second Coming.” Today I decided to look up more about the poem’s background, and came up with this: Modernists read the poem as a dirge for the decline of … Continue reading →
THE SECOND COMING William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and … Continue reading →
RIP, Michael Brown. Who’s Michael Brown? you ask: Michael Brown, a keyboardist and songwriter who at 16 was a writer of the 1966 hit “Walk Away Renee” for his band the Left Banke and composed “Pretty Ballerina” for it as … Continue reading →
I was in my car listening to NPR the other night (yes, sometimes I listen to NPR) and someone mentioned that, back in the 30s, half of John Steinbeck’s first draft of Of Mice and Men had been eaten by … Continue reading →
Ace points out that in the OU SAE case, even the ACLU (boy, that’s a lot of acronyms in one sentence) has been extremely reluctant to admit that the university acted unconstitutionally in expelling the two student ringleaders of the … Continue reading →