Research Areas

Latin poetry and its reception

Biography

I am grateful to be devoting my three score years and ten to the study of classical philology, the practice of aesthetic criticism, and, above all, the reading, writing, and teaching of poetry (ancient Greek, classical Latin, and modern English). As a scholar, I am interested in influence, particularly as manifested in Augustan poetry. As a critic in the Paterian mold, I aim to seek out and to render appreciations of the literature which most and best yields the fruit of a quickened and multiplied consciousness. And as a lover of poetry, I hope to empower the imagination to improve reality.

Before tending inland and toward the Western sea, I studied Classics at Yale (where I wrote my senior essay on the influence of Ovid's Metamorphoses upon James Joyce's Ulysses) and taught Latin on Nantucket. Since coming to Berkeley, I have not only pursued my old interest in Ovid and Joyce but also developed a new interest in their lyric contemporaries Horace and Wallace Stevens. In addition to a dissertation on the sublime affinities of the latter pair, current projects include essays on various Horatian odes, reviews of recent books and films, and a collection of my own lyrics.

Having slouched home towards Bethlehem (Connecticut), I will spend the 2020–2021 academic year writing my dissertation and teaching Latin at The Taft School.

Publications

"Cold Copulars: Notes Toward a Horatian Stevens." Arion 25, no. 3 (Winter 2018): 101–125.

"A Review of Call Me by Your Name, Courtesy of Philology 101." Arion 26, no. 2 (Fall 2018): 151–160.

"Riverrun: Channelling Anna Perenna in Finnegans Wake." In Uncovering Anna Perenna: A Focused Study of Roman Myth and Culture, edited by Sarah McCallum and Gwynaeth McIntyre, 149–162. London: Bloomsbury, 2019.