Given that you are a scholar, I want
you to discuss for me about scholarship, about your poetry.
What a kind question.
I am-- I think probably the most important thing it brings
is not so much.
Sometimes the musical presence of that other--
I work on the 16th and 17th century English literature
and culture, and I--
so sometimes because I'm saturated with that loveliness.
It's just-- there is there-- among other things
it's just really good company in which to spend one's time.
But I think--
So there are actually some musical hauntings in them,
and you'll see, you know, I mean,
I got like, I see Midsummer Night's Dream a lot,
and I think about it.
But I think it's in some ways what
it gives me isn't elsewhere, it gives me another place to go.
It gives me a reprieve from self and the present.
It gives me another model of imaginative discipline.
And I think it gives me back a sense of estrangement from
and therefore wonder in the life we lead here and now.
I mean, I think there's nothing like some people do
it other ways and some people submit
or seek to submit their imaginations to cultures
that are very different in--
that maybe contemporary with ours,
but are different in the way they inhabit
the Earth or the way they use language or the rhythms
of day and night and work.
I find that the wonderful challenge
to contemplate a very different historical period
is a wonderful, healthy, tonic because it
makes me realize how much is--
that I take for granted.
Is simply peculiar to us.
Is accidental divisions of the world, habits of mind,
and practice that we tend to think of as at odds
were absolute.
For instance, political life or scientific research
and the practice of poetry.
I mean, people did all of those things in the Renaissance.
That's they just look at Bacon look,
I mean, they just-- they did all those things together
and they did-- or they ghost wrote public speeches
for political leaders or correspondence
for aspiring and shady courtiers,
at the same time they were micromanaging spy communities
on the continent and proposing ways of realigning
experimental knowledge.
And it just-- and it's just good to be reminded of how
contingent our own habits are.
So I actually think that's the most significant effect really,
and the fact that--
I think I just love having a kind
of intellectual and imaginative commute.
You know is sort of, one place where I
can play hooky from the other.
I think it's the way I need to live.
So--