Shakespeare’s Sonnet 3 is a striking meditation on beauty, aging, identity, and inheritance. On the surface, it urges a young person to look into a mirror and recognize that their beauty is not something to hoard selfishly. Beneath that, though, the poem is really about mortality: time will erode the body, but a person can … Continue reading Beyond the Selfie: Why Shakespeare’s Sonnet 3 Still Matters
T.A.E.’s. Book Review – The Book of Lost Tales, Part One by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Book of Lost Tales, Part One is not merely an early draft of the legendarium later embodied in The Silmarillion; it is the site of Tolkien’s imagination in motion, where myth is still molten and where the great structures of Middle-earth appear in a more lyrical, experimental, and intimate form. Read as literature, the … Continue reading T.A.E.’s. Book Review – The Book of Lost Tales, Part One by J.R.R. Tolkien
T.A.E.’s. Book Review – Sir Orfeo by J.R.R. Tolkien
Sir Orfeo is a work of quiet brilliance: at once a scholarly recovery, a lyrical recreation, and a deeply moving meditation on loss, endurance, and the tenuous border between the human world and the realm of enchantment. Tolkien does not merely translate the medieval poem; he restores its music and discipline while allowing its emotional … Continue reading T.A.E.’s. Book Review – Sir Orfeo by J.R.R. Tolkien
“Catfished by My Twin? – Illyria Drama Unlocked” – Poetcore Shakespeare: The Bard for Gen Z
(T.A.E.’s LitBites) – A modern retelling of Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare Okay, picture this: a storm, a tiny boat, and two twins who get absolutely separated like two socks in a washing machine. Viola ends up on a new coast (Illyria), thinks her brother Sebastian is gone for good, and decides to play it safe. … Continue reading “Catfished by My Twin? – Illyria Drama Unlocked” – Poetcore Shakespeare: The Bard for Gen Z
Revisionist Poetry – “Toward the Cloudline” – Up Towards the Clouds, v.2
On a flawless morning,the skyline rises in layered stone,its towers reachingas if to test the weather,their crowns half-lostin threads of cloud. The photographer tilts back his head,searching for a vantagewhere distance becomes astonishment,where height feels like a dareand the air itselfseems ready to lift him. Below, the city keeps its pulse:buses sigh at the curb,crosswalks … Continue reading Revisionist Poetry – “Toward the Cloudline” – Up Towards the Clouds, v.2
T.A.E.’s. Book Review – Pearl by J.R.R. Tolkien
Pearl is an intellectually daring and emotionally exacting work, not because it dazzles with action, but because it turns grief into an architecture of thought. At once an elegy, a dream vision, and a theological argument, it is a poem in which mourning is never merely private: it becomes a testing ground for language, faith, … Continue reading T.A.E.’s. Book Review – Pearl by J.R.R. Tolkien
“Swipe-Right in the Arden” – Poetcore Shakespeare: The Bard for Gen Z
(T.A.E.’s LitBites) – A modern retelling of As You Like It by William Shakespeare Alright — imagine a big, messy group chat where everyone’s feelings are on read and the Wi-Fi is shady. Rosalind is the kind of girl who writes savage comebacks in her notes app and hides poems in the margins of her math … Continue reading “Swipe-Right in the Arden” – Poetcore Shakespeare: The Bard for Gen Z
T.A.E.’s. Book Review – Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by J.R.R. Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is one of the most luminous encounters between medieval poetry and modern scholarship: at once a tale of marvels, a moral drama, and a sustained meditation on what it means to be honourable in a world where honour is never simple. The scholar does not merely present … Continue reading T.A.E.’s. Book Review – Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by J.R.R. Tolkien
T.A.E.’s. Book Review – Smith of Wootton Major by J.R.R. Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Smith of Wootton Major is a seemingly modest fairy tale that reveals, on closer reading, one of his deepest imaginative convictions: that the ordinary world is not diminished by enchantment, but clarified by it. At first glance, the story appears almost slight—a village feast, a child who swallows a star, a smith who … Continue reading T.A.E.’s. Book Review – Smith of Wootton Major by J.R.R. Tolkien
T.A.E.’s Book Review – Farmer Giles of Ham by J.R.R. Tolkien
Farmer Giles of Ham is one of Tolkien’s most delightfully subversive works: a mock-heroic tale that looks at first like a rustic folktale, then quietly reveals itself as a sophisticated satire of epic language, aristocratic power, and the unstable relationship between legend and local history. Where much of Tolkien’s fiction seeks the sublime, this novella … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Book Review – Farmer Giles of Ham by J.R.R. Tolkien