justification

As I have often criticized the practice of blogging on the grounds that the ability to share the quotidian with the world does not imply its propriety, I feel I must justify my decision to finally create a blog. I intend it for educational purposes only; i.e., the educational purposes of my students. Primarily, I need a place to link to the blogs of my students since I am requiring them to blog for class.

The title of my blog (which, I tell you now, is likely to be rarely updated) comes from a poem by A.E. Housman. There are likely fewer more unfashionable poets in the academy today; he is perhaps not the best poet in the English language (i.e., no Chaucer or Shakespeare or Donne or Blake), but the one I most enjoy reading. Here is the poem "The Olive" (Additional Poems, XXIII).

The olive in its orchard
Should now be rooted sure,
To cast abroad its branches
And flourish and endure.

Aloft amid the trenches
Its dressers dug and died
The olive in its orchard
Should prosper and abide.

Close should the fruit be clustered
And light the leaf should wave,
So deep the root is planted
In the corrupting grave.

Exegesis is left as an exercise to the ideal reader.