Reflections from the 19th Century

For more than two years, I’ve been reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. As I’m surely the slowest reader on planet Earth, the Herculean summit of more than 800 pages is not easily conquered, and progress is further decelerated by my thirst for fragments of story and for the full experience of the world in which David’s life unfolds. For months, I’ve been stagnant, reading only a little at a time, not because I don’t want to know what happens, but because I want to dwell in that place and time as long as possible. I have a love for the characters and the world they inhabit. As with the setting of every excellent story, it has come to feel like a real place, one I will be sorry to leave when the last page is turned. The story is told in first person, so the reader views the world entirely through David’s eyes, and what a charming sense of goodness it inspires; David himself is quite intelligent, but also sincere, even-tempered, and incredibly kind. As an adult, he retains a certain innocence complemented by great sensibility, and as a child, he perceives quite keenly, despite his innocence, the truest forms of joy and qualities of character that merit admiration. The purity

Much Ado about Sappho

This Election Day, the American voter faces a broad variety of issues, not the least of which includes the choice of candidate who will sit in the Oval Office for the next four years. There are also a number of important propositions that challenge the voter’s notion of right and wrong and how those moral convictions should play out in the voting booth. One such issue is same-sex marriage. Now, the celebration of divergent sexual activity and lifestyles is not, by any means, a novel phenomenon. In Ancient Greece, one of the nine lyric poets known as Sappho produced a great deal of erotic writing in which her narrator expresses feelings of infatuation for other female characters. Sappho was born on the island of Lesbos, which is the origin of the word lesbian. Such issues are still controversial today, and unfortunately, people can be so polarized in their views that maintaining respectful disagreement while casting a conscientious vote is no easy task.

The more I deliberate the issue of same-sex marriage in my mind, the more I realize that any discussion must eventually address the

On "The Edge"

What is it about that wunderkind quartet from Dublin? I suppose they aren’t so young anymore, but as far as I’m concerned, their music is still every bit as quality as ever. There are, of course, those who perhaps think that isn't saying much. But U2 will, I think, always be my favorite. I would love to say this is due to some magic, some inexplicable quality such that when their collective sound is coursing through my veins, a higher power takes over me and unlocks a part of myself I would not have otherwise known. Well, there may be some truth in there, but mostly it has to do with The Edge. I say this with all due respect to the other three, because Adam and Larry are certainly quality musicians, especially Larry. And I have to admit that Bono’s majestic and occasionally almost

What I Loved about Wall-E

With the release of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, it appears Wall-E has now officially left theatres, and looking back over the seven weeks of its release, it seems a good point to reflect on what is, to me, so remarkably endearing and even prophetic about this marvelous little film.
First, consider the crafting of the movie. Top notch, to be sure. Pixar, in their typical fashion, gave painstaking care to critical details of the plot, which unfolds quite consistently. There is admittedly some lack of believability (e.g. how could there possibly be enough regenerated oxygen on a future earth devastated of most of its green vegetation to support indefinitely the returning human population?), most of which a reasonably intelligent viewer can rationalize enough to suspend their disbelief and appreciate the emotional plot line as well as

On Blasting Poetry

I deliberated a great deal about what to do with my first blog entry, and at length, I decided to provide some thoughts on poetics, a fitting subject to those who know me, I'm sure. Some time ago, perhaps several months, a friend and co-worker wrote a blog entry in which she blasted the whole of the poetical endeavor. Ironically, she had, at that time, been visiting my desk on occasion to encourage me to visit her blog and provide comments. On one such occasion, I happened to make an unwitting reference to my tremendous penchant for poetry, at which point, she emphatically stressed the importance of my frequenting the blog, given her recent electronic tirade. Like many, she sees poetry as a kind of useless, literary ego-stroking shared by academics and pseudo-intellectuals who simply don't have the sense or the gumption to say what they actually mean. I tried not to overreact to this, though I'm a little embarrassed to admit I began my response by referring to her comments as a form of blasphemy.

I have much to say on the subject of poetry, though I'll try not to be too "poetic." After all, brevity is the soul of wit, or such was the

I Am Born

It seemed such an excellent way to begin a novel, which is exactly what made me want to keep reading David Copperfield when first I opened it in a bookstore one evening and began to read. Of course, I have no intention of reviewing my life from birth, but the idea is the same: start at the beginning. My name is Chris, named after Christopher Robin, the well-known A. A. Milne character, whose stuffed animals had such endearing personalities and such captivatingly innocent powers of reasoning. My parents read the Pooh stories to my older brother when he was very little, which is how my dad learned to like the name Christopher. And so, the moment I was born and the doctor declared me a boy, my dad, in his enthusiasm, is remembered to have exclaimed, "It's Christopher Michael!" My mom, of course, knew he had his heart set on the name and so did not argue, though I believe she liked it as well. They said they had already decided not to name me Robin