THE FAERIE QUEENE: Last night I started re-reading Book One of The Faerie Queene. This time I’m going to try to read more than just the first book! Not sure if I’ll tackle the whole thing though–your advice is much requested. Scattered thoughts:

1) Wow, I’d forgotten how much I love the Spenserian stanza. It’s very simple, English almost naturally falls into that rhythm anyway, but the extra foot (?) in the last line really adds a kick. Freshman year, I’d sit in the back of Astronomy class sketching out Spenserian stanzas giving my impressions of whatever was going on in my life; I almost failed Astro, but it was worth it. I’ve gotta start doing them again. They’re good warm-up writing exercises: The rhythm is easy, and so your main challenges are making precise word choices (the stanzas are very short, so you need to squeeze maximum impact from minimum length) and seeing if you can milk the poetic form just a little. (You can’t get a huge amount of form-follows-function-type joy out of the stanzas, I think–they’re too simple.)

2) Yes, Elizabeth I as Gloriana is still creepy, oh well….

3) In some sense, Spenser can share the blame for my entrance into the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. I very much shared TFQ Bk I’s obsession with “seeming,” hypocrisy, deception and doubletalk when I read it as a freshman, back when I was first coming into contact with these bizarre beasties who called themselves conservatives. I really, really wanted to know whether these people, who seemed honorable and deeply personally invested in the search for and love of truth, were as duplicitous as my teen cynicism, relativism, and left-wingery led me to suspect. Of course, a couple of them were less honest than I’d hoped (though still generally more honest than I’d feared). But most turned out to be what they seemed. Which was pretty amazing. Still is, really.