Academically infused amateur literary-critical exercises, indulgences, and explorations. I have a PhD in English from Cornell, am currently teaching English at the high school level, having briefly given it the old college try–the blog is written in the belief that criticism need not, ought not even, take the shape and length and language of academic articles, monographs or talks; that criticism is, regardless of audience, worth pursuing in itself, as a matter of gaining a better understanding of that harmonizing and harmonious thing, literature, of how it works and the forces at work within it; that criticism is–as R.P. Blackmur would often say–a provisional matter, liable to change and to undergo revision, but nonetheless worth trying to set straight in a proper and finished form, on the off-chance that it persists, even against the odds of the cloud in which this is kept; that it is worth, when faced with as compelling a device for sanity as good literature often seems to be, to prod and assess, better understanding one’s own intuitions, inklings, and proclivities towards it, so as to feel more confident in the confidence it has won. The sense beneath it all is that criticism is worth pursuing, in whatever guise, because in brining into sharper focus what is valuable in literature, it often follows that what is valuable in other parts of life are brought into sharper focus too.
Literature: language tuning and attuning the imagination. [To what? can’t be said beforehand. My imagination? An imagination? The imagination?]
Criticism: I need this to happen, to me, or simply to happen, at all ; how is it happening, and should it be happening?
Critical Provisions 
Thank you for leaving your response on my blog and leading me to your wonderful essays! Looking forward to reading them. Very excited to see that you have Bob Dylan on your list, and many of my favourite writers: Joyce, Zola, Keats, Nabokov, Stevie Smith, Elizabeth Bishop – only two women though?
Enjoyed your Dryden article, will certainly come back for more.
Thanks. I am a reader of your posts.
Do you really understand the philosophy of Irad Kimhi? I think he is the most important philosopher after Wittgenstein.
I’m sure I do not understand its full reach—this was a note to distill what I do understand. I found the book intellectually thrilling nonetheless. But think Rodl’s work equally so.
I think Kimhi’s book is too dense too short.
Proust, Hill, Montale! Some of my favorites! And I’m just reading Gaddis right now. I’m about half way though JR. So glad to have found your blog as we have such similar tastes in reading.
Hello,
I am a Wikipedia Veteran Editor who is planning to make a page on Geoffrey Hill’s collection “For the Unfallen” over the next few months, and wants to include there a summary of what you have written on this blog about the poem “The Turtle Dove”. Would you mind sharing your name here?
Owen Boynton. Thanks!