L2L Looking Back ... A Century or Two

Looking Back … A Century or Two

Works by John Clare, Benjamin Franklin, Conrad Aiken, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Maxwell Bodenheim, Alfred Kreymborg, Robert Service, Robert Frost, and Sylvia Plath

It’s a New Year and a new day! Many are ready to leave 2020 behind, but what does the next year hold? It’s hard to tell (especially if we engaged last night in too much revelry) … so why not ring in the New Year with some reflections from our past? Join us as we take for medicine a conversation from Benjamin Franklin, look back on Conrad Aiken critiquing the new literary criticism, reflect on New Year’s reflections from John Clare and Sylvia Plath, and explore the poetic explorations of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity:

• “The Old Year” by John Clare
• “Dialogue Between Franklin and the Gout” by Benjamin Franklin (Midnight, October 22, 1780)
• “The Function of Criticism?” by Conrad Aiken (November 1921)
• “Relativities” by Edwin Arlington Robinson
• “Advice to the Fourth Dimension” by Maxwell Bodenheim
• “Round” by Alfred Kreymborg
• “The Spell of the Electron” by Robert Service
• “The Sagging Bough” by Robert Frost
• “New Year on Dartmoor” by“ Sylvia Plath