BillHeise | October 30, 2011
The world as recently learned of the death of Steve Jobs. He is being hailed as a hero who virtually created the world of technology we live in single-handedly. He started the first personal computer company in his parent’s garage, took it public, and drove the computer industry with his relentless vision, not on the [...]
BillHeise | October 25, 2011
I’ve been working on my first scholarly book on Spenser’s Book of Holinesse in his six book (and still uncompleted) Faerie Queene (I know; how cool am I?). I am going to publish this serious academic work before I publish my already completed satire on Art in the Age of Talk Radio, because in my [...]
BillHeise | March 7, 2011
I went to see the Chicago Shakespeare Company’s presentation of As You Like It last night. It is a fabulous play, and I was recommending it to my friends on Twitter (follow me at @WilliamHeise) until I realized that last night was the last performance. As You Like It was the subject of one of [...]
BillHeise | November 3, 2010
My parents raised me telling me that it wasn’t polite to talk about politics or religion. As a result, I have measured my life on other (I would say more lasting and important) matters. My family is by far the most important thing in my life. I have been married to the love of my [...]
BillHeise | October 27, 2010
I have fairly pedestrian tastes in literature. William Shakespeare is my favorite poet of all time, as well as my favorite dramatist. James Joyce is my favorite novelist. Most every aspect of the modern novel passes through Joyce, and this means that the greatest strengths as well as the greatest weaknesses that have appeared in [...]
BillHeise | September 26, 2010
I found this story on the Internet today. It’s another story about grammar mavens–this time it’s Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post– pronouncing the English language dead. The English language, which arose from humble Anglo-Saxon roots to become the lingua franca of 600 million people worldwide and the dominant lexicon of international discourse, is dead. [...]
BillHeise | September 18, 2010
This is a revision of the first paper I wrote in graduate school. It concerns Anne Bradstreet, the first poet who wrote European-style poetry on American soil. I sent an earlier versions of it to several academic journals, but they all rejected it. One told me to revise it and send it back, but told [...]
BillHeise | September 9, 2010
Found this on the Internet today. It’s a story about a “How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse” class being offered at the University of Baltimore. The newly-installed course will study film, comics and a full range of topics connected to Zombies and Zombie Survival, although it will probably sneakily make students learn about story telling [...]
BillHeise | June 11, 2010
Okay, I missed a day. Sorry readers. But I have yesterday’s post today. I’ve been reading Brad Gooch’s City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara. Frank was a member of the New York School of poetry. After serving in WWII (the Big One), he availed himself of veteran’s assistance and went to Harvard. [...]
BillHeise | February 22, 2010
The Music I Grew Up With The music of the 60s and 70s was new and exciting, both to me and to the world. The blues had broken of the backwaters and made it to the center of the world stage. I would listen to the rhythm of the music at punishing volumes, but as [...]
