… on her doorstep. She is not sure why
she is proud of this — why she’s proud
that a toad has chosen her doorstep on
which to settle and eat bugs — but she is.
As with a previous toad who lived on her
doorstep, UD has named it Elphaba.
… on her doorstep. She is not sure why
she is proud of this — why she’s proud
that a toad has chosen her doorstep on
which to settle and eat bugs — but she is.
As with a previous toad who lived on her
doorstep, UD has named it Elphaba.
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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte
June 5th, 2010 at 5:35PM
I’m sure there are countless toads, used to represent diverse things, in literature, but it is Larkin’s image for work. Even then, though, I am not sure what message it brings.
June 5th, 2010 at 5:52PM
Richard:
I guess in the poem Larkin likes the image of squatting the toad conveys –
But then he says he has to work even though he doesn’t want to:
The dumb passive oppressive negative energy within the speaker makes him a frightened little toad, squatting under the weight of his conformity and cowardice. He lacks the courage to risk freedom. He’d rather sit unmoving, squatting, like a toad, at his desk… Something that like…
June 5th, 2010 at 6:51PM
The way you describe it (persuasively) reminds me of the heavy bear in Delmore Schwartz. A differently purposed, more disgustedly treated image, but a similarly used one: an ‘inescapable animal’.
I am now saddled with the decision (which I know there is no need to make) of which to prefer of Larkin’s and Schwartz’s poems. That Larkin wrote many fine poems, and Schwartz considerably fewer, is pushing Schwartz’s case into a slight lead.
June 8th, 2010 at 11:59AM
[…] Toads! […]