Blogs about: English Matters
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Poetry's dumb
Teaching. You have to love it or leave it. Or you may love it and still leave it, which is my final(?) decision. Again. The straw this time is a question from a student beginning an in-class essay on … more →
Paisley and Plaid
Poetry's dumb
paisleyandplaid wrote 1 month ago: Teaching. You have to love it or leave it. Or you may love it and still leave it, which is my final( … more →
Who owns your books?
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paisleyandplaid wrote 5 months ago: Is anyone else appalled byAmazon’s electronic retrieval and removal of customers’ Kindle … more →
Canto III for the classroom
paisleyandplaid wrote 6 months ago: Dante’s Canto III of Inferno, which I will be teaching in the fall, poses unique challenges li … more →
What's your statue?
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paisleyandplaid wrote 8 months ago: Billy Collins writes about what his own and others’ memorial statues might look like. The spea … more →
Agnostic editor makes case for the Bible, but not God
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paisleyandplaid wrote 9 months ago: Slate’s David Plotz read every word of the Bible and lived to write about it in Good Book: Th … more →
Jekyll and Hyde and a Christmas sermon
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paisleyandplaid wrote 1 year ago: Victorian Bohemian Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the best-selling novella The Strange Case of Doctor … more →
"There is no frigate like a book"
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paisleyandplaid wrote 1 year ago: Emily Dickinson knew it as do all readers. Under the current circumstances, the less than inspiring … more →
"Who is John Galt?" . . . again
paisleyandplaid wrote 1 year ago: At The Huffington Post Greg Zehner , a former Goldman partner, writes about the bailout as signalin … more →
Assignment #3: Divide and classify
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paisleyandplaid wrote 1 year ago: First I had my students write a descriptive paper: you know, sensory detail, gripping adjectives and … more →
"Passion" for Poetry in New York
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paisleyandplaid wrote 1 year ago: New Yorkers love the arts. Don’t they? And this latest effort at promotion proves it. At vario … more →
Our friend, Francis Coppola
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paisleyandplaid wrote 1 year ago: He’s our friend, not because he knows us but because he loves good writing, especially short f … more →
The Parable of the Gnat
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paisleyandplaid wrote 1 year ago: When the young gnat was born, also the day of his death since gnats have a life span of one day, he … more →
Online readers aren't "lazy" necessarily
paisleyandplaid wrote 1 year ago: There is value, thrift in the various decoding skills one brings to the web as he begins to read. Mi … more →
Identify yesterday's quotation
paisleyandplaid wrote 1 year ago: It was my title for the little homage to men yesterday:”the spontaneous overflow of powerful f … more →
"1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die"
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paisleyandplaid wrote 1 year ago: Or else what? Objectionable use of the word “must” it seems. Of course the editor, Peter … more →
Meet Andy Borowitz
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paisleyandplaid wrote 1 year ago: I “met” Andy Borowitz years ago because I read The New Yorker, but just recently (earlie … more →
Deconstruction fun with "There was once"
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paisleyandplaid wrote 1 year ago: Margaret Atwood’s poetry and fiction are among the best. My first encounter was The Robber Br … more →
We'll miss you . . .
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paisleyandplaid wrote 1 year ago: . . . when you’re dead. Of course we will. Rest assured. A. E. Housman’s poem “Is … more →
Life after teaching
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paisleyandplaid wrote 1 year ago: Dear Paisley and Plaid (are you one or two?), I majored in English, and by your erudite commentary a … more →
