Zachary SuriAug 21, 20205 min readThe Potency of Poetic PrologueReaders often speak of poetry and novels as separate, defined genres of literature, but the truth is that they feed off of each other....
Zachary SuriJul 23, 20203 min readShort and Sour: Epigrams' Enduring WitSince the dawn of written language, poets and revolutionaries have scrawled sarcastic sayings onto walls, parchments, and tablets. These...
Zachary SuriJul 14, 20203 min readThe Poetic Power of English Pronoun Irregularity and Its EvolutionEnglish has often drawn intense critical attention for its lack of standardized conjugation, endless declensions, and its general...
Zachary SuriJul 8, 20204 min readRecognizing Human Futility from Virgil to AshberyNovelists and playwrights since the beginning of modern literature have sought to prove that life is purposeful, that we are not simply...
Zachary SuriJun 28, 20203 min readThe Literary Roots of Humanitarian MedicineIn one particularly poignant episode of M*A*S*H, Hawkeye Pierce, the hero surgeon whose vaudevillian antics and humanitarian commitment...
Zachary SuriJun 19, 20204 min readThe Glorious Absurdity of War from Horace to OwenFor millennia, historians and strategists have tried to make sense of the politics of war, but war is emotional just as much as it is...
Zachary SuriJun 14, 20204 min readThe Struggle to Preserve Memory from Virgil to MiłoszThe struggle to preserve memory, to gather some truth from lived experience, has plagued generations of poets. Coming to terms with the...
Zachary SuriJun 7, 20203 min readRevisiting Art and Modernity: Bringing the Classics to Life for Our TimeThis week I am revisiting my previous blog post on the hubris of humanity and the struggle to control our own inventions. For centuries,...
Zachary SuriMay 29, 20203 min readRevisiting Liberal Education: The Interminable Importance of the HumanitiesThis week I am revisiting my third blog post about the value of a liberal education as depicted by contemporary poet A.E. Stallings and...
Zachary SuriMay 20, 20203 min readRevisiting Grief: The Power of Humanity in the Face of DeathThis week, I am revisiting my second post about grief and the importance of humanity in the face of intolerance and violence. For...
Zachary SuriMay 13, 20204 min readRevisiting Tragedy: The Poetry of the Human StruggleThis week, I am revisiting my first post about tragic heroes and the importance of tragedy in world literature. The prevalence of tragedy...
Zachary SuriMay 6, 20205 min readThe Hubris of Humanity from Ovid to Ferlinghetti“Maybe America didn’t need art and inner miracles. It had so many outer ones. The USA was a big operation, very big. The more it, the...
Zachary SuriApr 29, 20205 min readThe Value of a Liberal Education from Martial to StallingsSaul Bellow, the great bombastic cynic, once wrote that “a fool can throw a stone in a pond that a hundred wisemen can not get out.” For...
Zachary SuriApr 22, 20204 min readThe Timelessness of Grief from Catullus to Campo“Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is” Saul Bellow writes in Herzog, his masterful novel of middle-aged angst. For...
Zachary SuriApr 15, 20204 min readThe Power of Catharsis from Sophocles to GinsbergIn a recent opinion piece in The Washington Post, Paul M. Blowers criticized the apparent “selfishness” of Greek tragedy, expounding...
