For Madmen Only

In This Essay

Steppenwolf: A Novel by Hermann Hesse (Basil Creighton, trans.)

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats (Richard J. Finneran, ed.)

Don Juan in Hell: From Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw

Last night I finished rereading Steppenwolf. I had put it down for a while and flitted among the arts.

I know for certain I am in the middle of two other novels. But I think I may have forgotten that I am in the middle of any number of others.

The past few weeks have been filled with theatre and opera.

As if that were not enough, I have been reading from the poetry of Rumi, W.B. Yeats, and John Keats. In fact, I have been working on memorizing Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale.” I have the first stanza of ten lines memorized; only seventy lines left to commit to memory.

“Why are you spreading yourself so thin?” I asked myself earlier.

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Weekly Review: October 9th to October 15th

Running a blog is a job in and of itself. Since starting this blog, my respect for journalists has grown because I have learned how much time it takes to craft a single post.

My essays are pure opinion pieces. I read a book, a poem, an essay, or a news article. Then I think about what I’ve read and then look at my world and see if its relevant, judge if I think others might enjoy reading about my interaction with that work.

And it takes me between two and four hours to write these essays.

Yet I’m hooked. I love writing here because I feel more alive because I am again engaging the world in ways that I haven’t since college. Each essays calls upon me to look at my world and analyze it and reflect upon it.

This is another great gift of literature.

And, yes, I call even bad newspaper essays literature.

These Things Caught My Eye

• Finger, Painting
• Do You Want Factory-Farmed Children?
• When the High Jump Becomes a Pole Vault
• Mommy, Am I Responsible Yet?
• Judging Motives to Evaluate Blame

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