Summary: A couple poems about the birth of Jesus, a pair of psalms adapted into poems, and a bonus poem about dying on vacation.
Commentary: I am not a poetry fan. I have slowly come to appreciate it a bit more as I've gotten older, but I still prefer prose. I did learn they tend to go better if you read them aloud. Nothing in tonight's selection is going to change that. Tonight's poems were all written when Milton was in his teens or early twenties. Crappy horny-hipster poetry has not changed at all in 400 years. Seriously, I have never read a hornier poem about Jesus in my life.
There's some really forced rhymes (unsufferable with council-table). There's a "wisard" with sweet-odours, which is funny to read, and an Angel Quire, which is a great character name.
I remember reading an article once about how Paradise Lost is the world's most successful fanfiction. You can see that in Milton's earlier work, which are just fan poems about the gospels, and rewrites of the plasms. One of the first things I wrote in elementary school were retellings of Sherlock Holmes radio plays that I listened to with me dad, so I can relate.
Throughout, there are references to gods and figures from other religions. I feel like this was common up until 20 years ago or so. All the classical authors drop a reference to Apollo three lines away from ones to Moses, and it was a staple of old school fantasy and sci-fi. Don't see it much anymore though. I feel like Christian references are fairly rare outside of explicitly Christian writing, and explicitly Christian writing rarely mentions other gods, because that'd be heresy (idolatry? blasphemy?)
Honestly, I could've lived without all of tonight's "assigned" reading, but I did enjoy the extra poem I tacked on at the end, "On The University Carrier Who Sickn'd In The Time Of His Vacancy, Being Forbid To Go To London, By Reason Of The Plague"
That "Of The Plague" at the end is funny (black death humor!) and it's a much more interesting and compact poem.
Where are we all on prose vs poetry vs script here? Drop a line in the comments.
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