Reading Uphill Lately

I've been readin things! Honest!

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Juvenilia

I'm not sure whether this collection of Tennyson's poetry is genuinely worse, or if I simply have been in a critical mood. No matter; here's my reaction. The inconsistent meter which seems to contribute to Tennyson's later works seems simply lazy here. With the possible exception of "Mariana," the first lines of which every gay man will recognize, not much here kept my eye. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see the seeds of Tennyson's characteristic themes, brotherly love and the poetic mind, in such poems as "The Gardener's Daughter," and the revealingly titled, "The Poet's Mind."

Bel and the Dragon, Susanna

These apocryphal books are a nice, if merengue in their insubstantiality, addition to the story of Daniel, who seems rather poorly characterized in his own book. Nonetheless, I can't quite give them credence. They clearly don't belong to the same author as that book, and have an almost renaissance feel to them.