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I don't remember ever hearing her talk about her religion, but Grace grew up in Guyana where the majority religion is Pentecostalism. I always assumed that Grace was also a Pentecostal, her poems are very reminiscent of Pentecostal witnessing.

Figurative language is really any sort of language where the words mean more than they at first seem to. Since all poetry uses language at maximum intensity, figurative language is a feature of all poetry - not just one particular style. In Alexander Pope's "Eloisa to Abelard" (an Augustan...

Figurative language is really any sort of language where the words mean more than they at first seem to. Since all poetry uses language at maximum intensity, figurative language is a feature of all poetry - not just one particular style. In Alexander Pope's "Eloisa to Abelard" (an Augustan...

The most important poet of the American Civil War was Walt Whitman, though there were many others. The most important poet of the English Civil War was John Milton, again, there were several dozen others (all worth reading).

Henry King's Exequy is probably the creepiest poem in English. But very few people understand it enough to realise what is actually being said. Aleister Crowley is pretty challenging until you get used to him. Here is Sleeping in Carthage The month of thirst is ended. From the lips That hide...

His father was Thomas Arnold - one of the most important educational theorists in nineteenth century England (also headmaster of Rugby school). All of Matthew Arnold's poems are about education in one way or another. He is always trying to point out ways that you can be a better person. (LIke...

In 499 BC the huge, rich, military theocracy of Persia decided to annihilate the small, poor, mainly pacifist federal democracies of Greece. Inside fifty years Persia had been brought to its knees, and was begging for peace. Theocracies (including Iran, Saudi Arabia, and almost the whole of the...

In 499 BC the huge, rich, military theocracy of Persia decided to annihilate the small, poor, mainly pacifist federal democracies of Greece. Inside fifty years Persia had been brought to its knees, and was begging for peace. Theocracies (including Iran, Saudi Arabia, and almost the whole of the...

Are there any branches of Islam that do this?

"I have no doubt that if Dr. Goebbels were still alive, Obama would hire him." Then you are bat$h1t crazy. What colour is Barack Obama's skin? What happened to people with skin that colour in Nazi Germany?

Judaism: it's a guy thing.

The Bibe talks about things breeding 'after their kind'. Creationists have invented a pseudo-science called Baraminology which teaches that no hybrid species can ever occur (since that would refute the Bible). Apparently Tigons and Mules are not hybrid species (since if they were the Bible...

Walk into your local cancer ward. Do you see priests there, or doctors?

Walk into your local cancer ward. Do you see priests there, or doctors?

I know that several sects in Wicca are basically fertility cults. I wouln't want to teach a child that was wearing a tee with a phallus on it. Crosses are ok - they are just jewelry. But if you allow crucifixes I suppose you have to allow guillotines and elextric chairs too. I think teachers...

You need to teach creationism in Biology class because otherwise the religious kids will get Left Behind.

If you're educated and intelligent you know that almost all understanding outside mathematics is subject to revision, and that distinguishing a 'fact' from an 'extremely likely hypothesis' is no trivial matter. This argument is just an atheist version of the 'Evolution is only a Theory'...

"We all know how the people who existed before Columbus’ time thought that the world was flat. " A planetary earth, orbiting in space, is described in detail in the opening lines of Ovid's Metamorphoses. The idea that the earth is flat comes from the Bible, the Greeks and Romans knew better...

What's the point of having a Big Brother if he won't thump the kids you don't like?

He lay there blown to smithereens And to himself he said: "If only I had not been killed I would not now be dead!"