Child of Jim

Well, I kind of can't believe it, but I've now written seven pages about Matthew Arnold. I decided to go for gold and write about "Dover Beach," since in my opinion it is the famous one for a reason. And the assignment being a close reading, and me being pressed for time, I just played it to my strengths.

I have a feeling the prof probably doesn't know what she was getting into assigning an ex-Irvine-MFA a close reading. And you know, this is cheesy but I really love this stuff. I love prosody. I feel almost privileged to have a vocabulary with which to describe why I love a certain line. In fact, maybe later I'll blog why I love a certain line, but not this close to the paper. In which I pulled out all the J & M stops, mostly on sound but there was also some SVO in there and I used the word hypotactic. This stuff is not breaking any new scholarly ground, but it sure is fun.

Speaking of Jim, he was commissioned to write a poem for the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, and here it is. This link won't work forever, so you should read it now. It is worth it.