slow/fast

Slow days on the po-blogosphere, it seems – at least from where I'm crouching. The real standouts in my limited surfing time are the steady stream of wonderful nuggets from Jonathan Mayhew's Bemsha Swing & the continuous paratactic splendor of John Latta's Isola di Rifiuti. Why waste your time here?
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Splendidly unchurched students in my Bible-as-lit course this Fall.
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Trivia from Antonia Fraser's biography of Cromwell: Sigmund Freud named one of his sons "Oliver" in honor of Old Noll's efforts on behalf of letting the Jews back into England.
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Best couplet from the first half of the 17th c.: the opening of Andrew Marvell's "Tom May's Death," satirical account of the journey into the underworld of the poetaster May, one of the least talented of the "Sons of Ben [Jonson]" (who appears to have died after a drinking bout):

As one put drunk into the packet-boat,
Tom May was hurried hence and did not know't.

Bastard Ashbery's already taken the 1st line for a title.