Reading and Writing

Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Claire and I swoon over our favorite bits of Romeo and Juliet, and discuss why this play is not a cautionary tale of unbridled passion and the excesses of youth, but rather a hymn to the redemptive powers of love itself. 

Lawrence Durrell, Justine

Claire and I celebrate this under-read hidden gem, the first novel in Durrell's "Alexandria Quartet." We wander through topics like love, sex, memory, time, prose style, modernism, and much more. 

Dante, Paradiso

Claire and I weep over the end of Dante's sublime poem and try to describe, in some small way, the power of his mystical vision of unity for the modern reader.

Dante, Purgatory

Claire and I climb the mountain of purgatory with Dante and Virgil and talk about pride, love, morality, freedom, pleasure, Christ, grief, trials, suffering, and lots lots more. 

Dante, Inferno

Claire and I walk with Dante and Virgil through hell. Along the way, we talk about all manner of things: pity, sin, reading, love, exploration, tradition, heresy, truth, and most of all why Dante is important to us, just two common readers, in the 21st century. 
 

Macbeth, by William Shakespeare

Check out my new book of poems here. 
 
Claire and I fall under the spell of Shakespeare's Macbeth, and walk through some of our favorite moments in this play. Among other things, we talk about the dangers of the imagination, the nature of paradox and truth, the cyclical nature of tragedy, the milk of human kindness, the motif of blood, and the way Macbeth (and all of us) are torn between this life and the idea of the next. Along the way we ask if there are any glimmers of hope to be found in this, Shakespeare's darkest ode to humanity. 
 
 

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Claire and I swoon over one of our favorites, Conrad's Heart of Darkness. We talk about how and when to approach great books, what makes Conrad a master prose stylist, how this work subverts too-easy dichotomies of light and dark, Kurtz as a distillation of Europe, why Marlowe stays loyal to him, the horror of existence, the evil in every human heart, the dark power of nihilism, and what glimmers of light, if any, this novella offers as a source of hope. 
 
Check out my new book of poems here. 

Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu

Claire and I chat about our love for another ancient religious text, the Tao Te Ching. We talk about doing noble things simply, and simple things nobly. We also discuss ideas like emptiness, peace, humility, immateriality, fate, balance, how this text could be relevant for artists, writers, and parents, and what it could look like to live "the Way." Loosey-goosey, loosey-goosey...
 
Check out my new book of poems here. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance," and more.

Claire and I use Emerson's life-changing essay(s) to think out loud about genius, inspiration, instinct, truth, authority, failure, beauty, good and evil, history, the literary tradition, appropriation, America, and more. 

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Claire and I savor our favorite bits of the Meditations, and talk about the unity of all things, living in the moment, bearing our trials nobly, accepting pain as a part of life, how to think about change, what the duty of humans is, and much more. Also, Nietzsche somehow sneaks in to help us push back on some of Marcus Aurelius' claims, and to ask if Marcus Aurelius loves life enough, when forgetting is important and when it isn't, and how to find a balance between acceptance and hope. 
 
Check out my new book of poems here.