More than twenty years ago, I met Wandalbert of Prüm, a calendar-obsessed monk who was born the year before Charlemagne died. A loose translation of his long poem De mensium duodecim nominibus signis culturis aerisque qualitatibus (“On the Names, the Signs, the Labors, and the Weather Conditions of the Twelve Months”) caught my eye in … Continue reading “She has centered on the topic of the sky…”
I loved the heyday of blogs. Blogs were great levelers, bringing new writers into friendly contact with established scholars, authors, and thinkers, while blog readers rewarded a certain long-form quirkiness that I confess may, perhaps, occasionally characterize…some of my writing. Yet blogs were also highly ephemeral. Although I plan to keep it online indefinitely, “Quid … Continue reading…
The Pickwickians had no sooner dismounted than they were surrounded by a branch mob of the honest and independent, who forthwith set up three deafening cheers, which being responded to by the main body (for it’s not at all necessary for a crowd to know what they are cheering about), swelled into a tremendous roar … Continue reading “You see, it’s the hole I dug…”
Some famous places are rightly hard to reach. In May, during a hastily planned jaunt to England, I had a free afternoon and thought to visit Little Gidding, which inspired the last of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. Just 70 miles from London and 30 miles from Cambridge, Little Gidding makes you work for it: An … Continue reading “And for the first time, in my small world…”
“A lot of writers seem really dumb, but you don’t, so I thought I should write to you.” I can’t find the first email Jake Seliger sent me, but that was the gist of it—delivered with bluntness that cloaked genuine hope. Then in his mid-20s, Jake wanted me to read a draft of his memoir … Continue reading “…when everything that dies shall rise.”
Early last year I heard from Paul Deane, a theoretical linguist who maintains the website alliteration.net and edits Forgotten Ground Regained: A Journal of Alliterative Verse. Having gotten wind of my long, don’t-care-if-anyone-gets-it poem The Beallsville Calendar, Paul kindly listed me on his site and accepted two of my pieces that might never have landed … Continue reading “Ancient walls of…
In October, a rare free weekend surprised me. I put aside the books I’m drafting, asked everyone who relies on me to grant me a few selfish days, and drove nine hours north and thirty years into the past. I barely recall how, but I once spent 16 unhappy months in New Hampshire, where a … Continue reading “When your whole life is on the tip of your tongue…”
I set down this remembrance here, because it is an instance to myself of the manner in which I fitted my old books to my altered life, and made stories for myself, out of the streets, and out of men and women; and how some main points in the character I shall unconsciously develop, I … Continue reading “The walls between us all must fall…”
Once, this blog flourished. Now it languishes, but I’d rather think of it as fallow, resting and regenerating before eventual re-sowing. It’s ready when a project comes along. Readers, when I had them (cue the folk music: “gone to Substack, everyone…”), told me that I never revealed much personal information on this blog. That won’t … Continue reading “Gotta go inside, back where it started…”
“Quid Plura?” is still here, and although the site is updated less than before, I’m still pleased to have an online notebook for stuff that fits nowhere else. I say that every year, and it’s still true. Writing projects, the ongoing pandemic, and a string of losses made for a tiring year, but a few … Continue reading “…and he saw his days burn up like paper in fire.”