Popular

It seems that web readers are interested in sex and poetry. My most popular post ever on this blog is “Dating in Taiwan“, an article that originally appeared in the magazine “Taiwanease”. While the pugnacious, fast-talking style that I used in the article made it very readable (and landed me some work with another magazine in Taiwan), I suspect that style didn’t much assist the clarity of the overall argument. I think what I was trying to say in this piece was not, “It’s actually not great to be a horny, white male in Taiwan”, but, “If it is so great, why are still you unhappy”?

The second most popular is this analysis of Christina Rossetti’s poem, “Uphill” - clearly a lot of schools have put this on the syllabus. If there are any other poems you’d like reviewed, send me an email - if I know them, I’ll write something up.

My own favourites on this site include “Hemingway“, “The writer as fool“, “Orientalists” and “Lamb and Islam“.

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Daniel

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The road to Marmusa monastery, Syria