ELBrooks, hero, poet, housekeeper

Why send your kid to Notre Dame though when they could learn about the medicinal uses of leeches at Thomas Aquinas college? Why take that risk?

A poem by Anne Carson, who was awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature. Read it in full: newyorker.com/magazine/2001/…

Charles Baudelaire at age 29, daguerreotype, 1850

I've been repeatedly asked to weigh in on the new Texas reading list, which includes required Bible readings from both the Old and New Testaments, so here goes. (As a preliminary aside, I'm not a fan of set reading lists, so let me tackle THAT problem in a future post.) Now, about requiring students to read the Bible: I have conflicting thoughts. Let me start with some personal context. When I was working at the College of William & Mary, I taught the Bible as Literature course in the English department. The course was introduced because the English faculty realized that students were coming into their literature requirements with no knowledge of the Bible at all--which meant that they had a very hard time understanding Paradise Lost, East of Eden, Moby-Dick, and anything by T. S. Eliot. Biblical literacy, it turns out, is quite important for the critical analysis of most English-language works produced between 400 and, well, 2000. (Our literature, as Peter Leithart points out, "continues to feed off the root of the Christian Bible, but in a more subtle way than the literature of earlier centuries.") I was asked to teach the course because I have an MDiv as well as my MA in English and PhD in American literature. The other faculty who taught the course in alternate years were specialists in medieval and Renaissance literature. That context grounds my objections to the Texas literature requirements. Yes, students need an understanding of Biblical content so that they can understand an entire millenium of literature constructed on the knowledge of biblical metaphors, language, and concepts. No one should object to the simple inclusion of Biblical passages in a literature curriculum. BUT. Who is teaching these passages? What training have they received? Do they have any theological knowledge? Do they understand that ancient literature works under different assumptions than an article from (at random) People magazine? If they are teaching the story of Jonah and the whale, which is currently on the elementary school list, how will they present it? As a funny fairy tale? As a literal account? As a presentation of the conflict between the God of the Old Testament and the mythical forces thought to rule the deep waters? (Probably not, unless they've been to seminary and studied Hebrew.) There is, in the Texas decree, absolutely no sense that anyone involved in constructing these literature lists has ANY comprehension that teaching ancient literature, literature considered as sacred, AND (as a double whammy) ancient sacred literature requires particular skills in understanding these stories. Instead, Religion News reports that the "Daniel and the Lion's Den" [sic] selection is to be "supplied by the Christian Broadcasting Network, a media company founded by televangelist Pat Robertson in the 1960s." In addition, it appears that the recommended translation for these stories is the New International Readers Version of the Bible--a modern, much-debated translation simplified to a third-grade reading level. This introduces a whole new set of distortions and problems to the Old Testament stories in particular. As a scholar, I shudder to think of the misdirections that unprepared (through no fault of their own) teachers will provide their young students. As a parent, I'd never want my child to encounter the stories of Noah's ark or the creation of humanity through an unqualified, overwhelmed elementary school instructor. I'd rather handle that myself, thank you very much. So, despite my desire that all young readers (no matter their faith) acquire enough Biblical literacy to not be totally adrift while reading pre-2026 literature, I'm coming down on the "This is a very bad idea" side of the equation. nytimes.com/2026/06/25/us/te… religionnews.com/2026/06/19/… theopolisinstitute.com/the-b…

*Another* apparently AI-generated story wins a literary prize, this time judged by a panel including the novelist Ruth Ozeki. Literary prizes need to start including Pangram checks in their process, or else change the rules to make AI writing ok. It’s very simple!

Leaves of Grass is the single best volume of poetry by an American poet. In it Whitman fashioned a new form of poetry, and his vision, radical, egalitarian, embracing the mother, the slave, & all living things, upset the orthodoxies of his time, and ours. A perfect book.

staggering numbers. hard to maintain a representative democracy when this is how the voters feel.