Paradise Procrastinated

I figure anyone reading this blog must be pretty desperate for something to read. So, even though I seem to have lost interest in my own thoughts recently, that's no reason you should go hungry. And since my own progress with Milton has been a little slow thus far, here's a link to a good article that just came out in The New Yorker. The very fact of such an article in 2008 kind of makes me happy. (Here's a sentence to whet your appetite: "The best-known portrait of his mature years makes Milton look like the dyspeptic brother of the man on the Quaker Oats box.")

This article comes along at a good time for me, because it helps me psych myself up for finishing (which is to say, reading about ¾ of it for the first time) Paradise Lost. I haven't even gotten to "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso". I'm just about to re-read Vendler's chapter on Milton from Coming of Age as a Poet, though.

I did, however, watch Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which is a poetic epic in its way. So I haven't been totally unproductive. (Plus, Nausicaä is way cooler than Adam.)

Also, I read a book about Freud and Einstein, so it may be that I'll be ranting about psychoanalytic theory instead of poetry when I get back on the blog-wagon. Can you feel the excitement?

Don't say you haven't been warned.