John Milton

The Literary ‘Outsider’ Novel

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Does an age of frenetic online activity afford time for literary masterpieces, especially Outsider Novels, transcending what is considered ‘normal’? He whose vision cannot cover History’s three thousand years Must in outer darkness hover Live within the day’s frontiers.   The above stanza is from a twelve-book, poetry collection by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which was … Read more

Anarchy Booked

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A poetaster’s tribute to Geoffrey Hill’s The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin (2019). I heard Sir Geoffrey refer many times in his Oxford lectures (2010-2015) to our current situation as one of ‘plutocratic anarchy’. I suspect that, like many, he was fascinated and frustrated by the oxymoronic sight of ordinary, ‘common’ people persistently … Read more