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Recent Posts
- post #5, concluding the Preface to my book in progress, _Upcycling Ecopoetry_
- post #4 in the series, from the preface to my book in progress, Upcycling Ecopoetry
- post #3 in the series, from my book in progress Upcycling Ecopoetry
- Post #2 in the series, from the preface to Upcycling Ecopoetry
- Post #1 in a series, all from the preface of my book in progress, _Upcycling Ecopoetry_
Recent Comments
- ankara bo?anma avukat? on On the Game of Thrones title sequence
- Fireborn on Some Reasons Why Daenerys Targaryen’s Character Is Even Better in Game of Thrones Than in Song of Ice and Fire
- Daniel Bosch on Daniel Bosch on Daisy Fried’s poem “Torment”
- Amy on What Should I Do With the Dead Turk in the Bedroom? Class, Sex, and Otherness in Downton Abbey
- Rahul Shayar on On the Game of Thrones title sequence
Pages
- About Me
- Akwete Weave poetry chapbook
- Digital Humanities Projects
- Ecotone // poems by Peter Schmidt // wondering through the natural world …
- Engl 009H “Portraits of the Artist” — an introduction to literary and cultural studies for first-year students.
- English 116 American Literature Honors Seminar, Fall 2014: the Literature of the U.S. South
- English 52A (U.S. Fiction, 1900-1950)
- English 52B, U.S. Fiction 1945 to the Present. Swarthmore College, Fall 2017.
- English 53: Modern American Poetry
- English 53R: Advanced Research Topics in U.S. Literature
- English 71B: The Lyric Poem in English (Fall 2013)
- English 71D: The Short Story in the U.S. (Fall 2018)
- Online Essays
- Pocketa Pocketas (pulses & pips of poems)
- Publications
- “Truth so mazed”: Faulkner and U.S. Plantation Fiction
- A review-essay on William Carlos Williams’ _By Word of Mouth: Poems from the Spanish, 1916-1959_
- A selection of older print and digital scholarly work
- On Eros Crossing the Color-Line in William Faulkner and Margaret Mitchell
- On Optimists’ Sons and Daughters: Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter and Peter Taylor’s A Summons to Memphis
- Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus
- The “Raftsmen’s Passage,” Huck’s Crisis of Whiteness, and _Huckleberry Finn_ in U.S. Literary History
- Selected Courses
- SPLEEN poetry chapbook: pissed-off poems for a pissant age.
- Very Large Array // a poetry collage project by Peter Schmidt (1990-2000)
- Very Large Array project
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Category Archives: Literature
Thoughts on Orsino’s opening speech in Twelfth Night, and on the ending of the play—as occasioned by re-reading the play to attend Pig Iron’s performance in the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival
Re-reading Twelfth Night in preparation for seeing Pig Iron’s interpretation of it in Philly’s Live Arts Fest, I re-lived my delight in this great comedy, which I first discovered when I was twenty. But somewhat to my embarrassment I found that lots … Continue reading
16 postcard-length meditations on the Game of Thrones ending
Does this really need a spoiler alert? OK, spoiler alert. Don’t have a meltdown. Dany touching the Throne of Swords in the snow in 8.6 completes one of the dream-visions she had in the House of the Undead in the … Continue reading
download Ecotone and/or Spleen (my 2 new poetry chapbooks)
Ecotone // 14 poems by Peter Schmidt, about wandering through the natural world … A downloadable pdf, from Pixel Press / Swarthmore You may also download SPLEEN (political poems protesting + reimagining the fate of society and nature). =====For either or … Continue reading
On Contradictions in Nathaniel Rich’s “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change.”
Nathaniel Rich’s issue-long essay in this week’s New York Times Magazine receives a title worthy of a play: “Losing Earth: The decade we almost stopped climate change. A tragedy in two acts.” It’s definitely worth an hour or two of … Continue reading
On Colson Whitehead’s new novel, _The Underground Railroad_
Three chapters of Colson Whitehead’s new novel, The Underground Railroad, were published as a special print supplement to last Sunday’s New York Times (Aug. 7). What’s so extraordinary about the novel’s vision is not that he makes the “underground railroad” … Continue reading
Posted in Literature, Uncategorized
Tagged Afrofuturism, fiction, slavery, underground railroad, whitehead
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Brief comments on Terry Eagleton’s latest book, Culture (2016)
See Culture by Terry Eagleton My rating: 4 of 5 stars Lucid and concise readings of Burke, Swift, Herder, Austen, Marx, Wilde, and T.S. Eliot, among others. The book is less focused and persuasive when Eagleton traces the long and … Continue reading
Freedom and Fate in Game of Thrones, “The Door”
For Game of Thrones fans, please don’t read this until you’ve seen Season 6, Episode 5 (“The Door”). Normally stories about time travel dramatize the power of human agency, our potential ability to know and intervene in past events and … Continue reading
On David Bowie’s Bluebird
Re David Bowie’s “Lazarus,” from his brilliant final album, Blackstar, the New York Times has this to say: “The song is a man in total distress, and then finding a way out, in his imagination, so he could still be … Continue reading
On Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, 1962 and 2015
My recent essay on Philip K. Dick’s 1962 novel, comparing it with Amazon’s 2015 The Man in the High Castle‘s 10 episodes. Summary: Amazon’s adaptation of Dick’s novel is a brilliant transformation of it just right for America’s flirtation with … Continue reading
Some quick thoughts on current debates about higher education
“Everyone Thinks the Current State of Higher Education is Awful. Who is to Blame?” Daniel W. Drezner, The Washington Post, 14 August 2015. This article summarizing some current debates about higher education is worth reading. In the U.S. we’re definitely … Continue reading