Anthony Esolen

Today I had an experience I've not had in 10 years -- or more, all things considered. I was chatting with an old friend of ours outside her apartment, on the lawn. A boy across the street was fooling around with a soccer ball. He's 16, and built like a middle linebacker. She…

On the left, the old St. Ann's Church in Emmaus, PA. The interior was even lovelier. On the right, the new St. Ann's. The interior is worse. Why? Why was nobody embarrassed?

Lately, on a lark, I have been watching a couple of cartoons now and then: the Looney Tunes / Merrie Melodies from about 1940-1960 or so, under the oversight of Chuck Jones and his buddies. Every once in a while, the channel puts out some cartoon from the 80's with the same…

I use a lot of languages regularly or sporadically in my work: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Anglo-Saxon, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Welsh, even Russian once or twice. I've taught courses in the History of the English Language. I write on etymology as Monday's entry at our…

Jesus calls Satan a liar and a murderer from the beginning. We ought to bind those two sins more closely than we are accustomed to doing. Milton's Eve, after she has eaten the fruit: But to Adam in what sort Shall I appear? Shall I to him make known My change as…

Memorizing Paradise Lost: 8514 lines down, 2100+ to go Satan's final speech in Paradise Lost: Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers, For in possession such, not only of right I call ye and declare ye now, returned Successful beyond hope, to lead you forth Triumphant…

A beautiful essay by my DW, at Word and Song -- on the great George Gershwin, who died too young: "Our Love is Here to Stay" open.substack.com/pub/anthonyeso…

I saw the other day a clip with some tousled 20-something boy reviling a vocabulary test (multiple choice) used in Japan after first-year English. The young man confessed that he had never HEARD most of the words in question. I can't remember all of them. I do remember ESCHEW…

Poetic meters do not easily translate from language to language, and sometimes they don't translate at all. English poets developed the capacity of blank verse to model, as best they could, the musical versatility of Greek and Latin dactylic hexameter. Longfellow's attempts to…

Nobody likes spoiled children. Other kids don't like them. Teachers don't like them. The neighbors don't. Cousins and aunts and uncles don't. Shopkeepers don't. Not controversial. But this might be: their own parents don't like them, and they don't like themselves.

Which institution of American life is healthy? How to corrupt any group of human beings: Give them to understand that they will not be held accountable for failure, stupidity, or immorality. Shake well, wait 10 minutes.

You know you've got English iambic pentameter in your soul when you can tell right off that all these are examples of it: O that this too too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O…

The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher Called a hen a most elegant creature. The hen, pleased at that, Laid an egg in his hat, And thus did the hen reward Beecher. A wonderful bird is the Pelican: His bill can hold more than his belly can. He can take in his beak Enough food for a…

I see that a white dude passed himself off as a "gender-fluid" person from Nigeria and got 47 poems published which he wrote deliberately badly, as a hoax. Now, the real scandal here is not just the obvious and pointless discrimination, but the more obvious LACK of it. How come…

I am reading Stephen Crane right now, from an old (1950) Rinehart edition of The Red Badge of Courage, with selected prose and poetry. I haven't read him in 40 years at least. His "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets" is acutely painful, as the story is filled with the negligent, the…

From Word and Song, one of the fanciest of hymns, fit for a big stage and some stupendous tenors: The Holy City, by @AnthonyEsolen open.substack.com/pub/anthonyeso…

I've heard it said that there were two comedians nobody ever wrote for: Jonathan Winters and Don Rickles. You couldn't write as fast as they could improvise. Both, by the way, were very nice men. I think too that both were brilliant IN SPITE of the institutions around them. In…

Our daily dose of normal -- and, today, the fantastical -- only at Word and Song: FANCY, by @AnthonyEsolen open.substack.com/pub/anthonyeso…

One of the Mysteries of the Universe: I started doing impersonations when I was a small boy. I think that every man alive could write that sentence above -- because every man you meet does impersonations. Some do a few, some do a lot; sometimes they're great, sometimes just…