About Me

Sparta, NY

 

 

Oratory Prep, '84

Fordham University, '88

Masters work in Literature at Lehman College and Iona College

Started at SJR in September 2005

 

 

I love literature because of the insight it gives us not only into the mysteries of the human soul (things like greed, or mercy, or ambition, or grief, or personal fortitude) but also because of the way it lets us see into the past. It really DOES matter that the Green Knight (the embodiment of druidic paganism who challenges the budding Christianity of King Arthur and his knights in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) wears gold spurs. This fact PANICS Arthur's knights: this rude visitor is SO skilled at riding (a virtue held most highly by medieval warriors) that he doesn't NEED spurs to control his giant horse, but he does like the way they look.

 

Anyhow, if I could bring one iota of my passion about literature to my students, I will consider myself successful.

 

My goal is to provoke curiosity or spark creativity by exposing my students to literature that some people consider dead - or at the very least, useless. My happiest teaching days are those when the students walk out of my class discussing or - even better - arguing about something we experienced in literature that day.