It is published! My collection of poems and essays on Homer, Virgil, Dante, and the Romantics, reflecting and singing about nature, romance, culture, love, and the meaning of life is now available. Sing troubadour, sing! jplbooks.com/products/dante…

“Unless light pulled, as well as pushed, how would flowers contrive to twist their heads around after the sun?” —David Lindsay, A Voyage to Arcturus

One of the most troubling things about Northrop Frye is his anti-Catholicism, which comes out more in his notebooks than his published writings, though it is detectable even there. Happily, he seems to have softened on this point later in life, thanks to Walter Ong.

Update: I have finished the first draft of the first canto (thirty seven stanzas) of a projected six cantos.

"Of all the scholastics, St Bonaventure alone offers the widest scope to the beautiful in his theology: not merely because he speaks of it most frequently, but because he clearly thereby gives expression to his innermost experience and does this in new concepts that are his own."

“‘Adieu, then, Panawe! But do you wish to say anything more to me?’ ‘Only this, Maskull—wherever you go, help to make the world beautiful, and not ugly.’” —David Lindsay, A Voyage to Arcturus

George Herbert:

I, alas, heathen that I am, have an ‘I need coffee’ moment in the late afternoon.

So it begins.

I can only assume that “minor” here is used in the sense of not being in the highest category of poet—Shakespeare, Keats, etc.—but of nonetheless enduring quality—Drayton, Housman, etc. A Canadian poet who deliberately wrote minor verse in a less complimentary sense of “minor”

The books that made the journey with me:

Perhaps the best use of “leafmeal” in a poem since the 1880s.

Also, let’s take a moment to appreciate how great Frye’s titles are: The Great Code Words with Power The Double Vision The Myth of Deliverance The Return of Eden Fearful Symmetry Fables of Identity