My default advisor in college lived in a garden apartment in Santa Monica where, once a week, he taught a sparsely attended seminar discussing the works of the poet John Milton. His academic concentration at that time was a detailed thesis comparing the use of commas vs. semi-colons in Paradise Lost. The seminar, despite Milton’s star on the literary boulevard, wasn’t highly popular (two chairs and a couch were all the class needed) but it undoubtedly focused my dedication to the deep study of poetry, mostly English.
Later on this same professor advised me while I cried and bled over the pages of my senior thesis analyzing the poetry of Theodore Roethke, and subsequently provided the key recommendations for me to attend the graduate school in St Louis where he had attended a few years earlier.
I was recently reminded of the power of Milton’s poetry and I again offer a snippet to whet your appetite for a truly great poet and a very interesting dead white guy and his daughters. Remember, even the most vocal of Christian fundamentalists confuse the imaginative embellishment of Milton (and Dante) with scripture.
Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed, In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill Delight thee more, and Siloa’s Brook that flow’d Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime. And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou know’st; Thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss And mad’st it pregnant: What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the highth of this great Argument I may assert th’ Eternal Providence, And justifie the wayes of God to men.
A Celebration of Reading 