Please join us for a 4-week online literature seminar in which Judson Scruton will take us through selected works by Coleridge, Whitman, Browning, and Crane augmented by brilliantly illuminating commentary by literary giant the late Harold Bloom. Poetry packet will be emailed in advance.

No charge for the program. This seminar is made possible with the support of the Literary Series in Memory of Amy Quigley. Advance registration required. Register online in order to receive the readings and the Zoom session invitation links. By registering for the first session you will automatically be registered for all four sessions. Please email Michael Bellacosa with any questions at mbellacosa@wiltonlibrary.org.

Harold Bloom was generally considered the most important and popular literary critic of the last 100 years when he died last October. The author of over 40 books and the editor of more than 800, his 2004 The Best Poems of the English Language provides a useful introduction to his thinking. Unlike most college anthologies of English poetry that reflect the contending tastes and theories of a collection of editors, this anthology reflects the massively informed and discerning intelligence of a single mind. Bloom was a voracious reader (400 pages an hour with a near photographic memory) and synthesizing intellect that substantially shaped our thinking about The Western Canon, the values of reading, and the centrality of Shakespeare in “inventing” our ideas of the human. Our seminars will discuss selected works from his sampling and commentaries on Coleridge, Whitman, Browning, and Crane. Bloom is a marvelous guide and prompt to our own reading and discussion of selected poems by these four formative masters of English poetry and thought.

Judson Scruton M.A (The Johns Hopkins University, The Writing Seminars, specializing in poetry) has taught creative writing and literature at prep schools and universities. In his career as an educator Judson has also directed publications, communications, public relations, and development at a variety of educational institutions in the U.S. and U.K. including the Newberry Library in Chicago.