Tag Archives: Letters to a Young Poet

this post is a slightly edited version of a post that appeared on August 20, 2012, on the Good Letters blog In college, I took a yearlong class on Western Civilization.  Certain images stand out: reading Oedipus Rex on the lawn outside the Life Sciences building and overhearing a student pronounce “Khomeini” with the same initial sound as “challah”—this would have been a month or so before the taking of American hostages; getting an A+ (my only in college) on a paper applying Civilization and Its Discontents to D. H. Lawrence’s story “The Prussian Officer”; hearing a T.A. refer to … Continue reading →