The magazine goes to town on Milton, with a series of personal responses to Paradise Lost: writers such as Boyd Tonkin and Erica Wagner choose their favourite passages and share their thoughts. There is a tingling essay from Jeff Wainwright to conjure the physical sensations of reading Milton. We don't stop there. We have the heavens, heavenly creatures, daylight imaginings and night skies. Patrick Moore writes on the book that began his fascination with the stars. The issue holds some of the finest essays we have ever carried in the magazine.
Milton's Paradise Lost
Jeffrey Wainwright
(extract)
After Eve, and then Adam, have eaten the forbidden fruit, the angel Michael shows Adam how the world will be now. It seems benign, a field with 'sheaves / New reaped, the other part sheep-walks and folds', and two men are before an altar. The offering of the first is accepted, but
The other's not, for his was not sincere;
Whereat he inly raged, and as they talked,
Smote him into the midriff with a stone
That beat out life... (Book XI, 443-6)
After those three heavy stresses - 'beat out life' - miming the astounding violence, Milton breaks his line. Michael explains that 'the unjust the just has slain', that 'these two are brethren', and Adam's own sons. Even the angel, Milton says, is moved by the scene. 'But have I now seen death?' cries the stricken Adam in another broken line. 'Death thou hast seen / in his first shape on man', says Michael, and then goes on to present a montage of all the subsequent shapes of human death and suffering, what Blake was to call, in his engraving of the scene, 'The House of Death'.
Adam's cry: 'Why is life given / To be thus wrested from us?' is one that few human beings will not have uttered or thought...
contents
editorial
Jane Davis: What's the Cosmic Point?
Editor's Picks
poetry
Peter Robinson
Dan Wyke
Bill Milner
Hugh Underhill
fiction
Ramesh Avadhani: One More Contest
essays
Alan Davis: From Patrick Moore to John Ruskin
Ann Stapleton: Looking Up
Jeffrey Wainwright: Milton's Paradise Lost
Iain Britton: By Word of Mouth
interviews
Julie Green: The Little Artist That Could
learning curve
Adam Piette: The Practice of Poetry: Recalcitrant Poems
Ask the Reader
reading lives
Carolin Crawford: Heavenly Inspiration
G.M. Hopkins: Journals
Helen Tookey: Here's the Poetry Lady!
Caroline Jupp: A Library of Unwritten Books
readers connect
Introduction to Starting Short
Connect with a Classic: Margaret Oliphant, Hester
Brian Nellist: Cool Writing, Warm Heart
Angela Macmillan and Jenny Dunbar: Wonder and Affright
Sarah Coley: Not Misunderstanding
Meg White: Meet the Reading Group: The Guernsey Group
reviews
Tom Sperlinger: His Head Down: Ralph Pite, Thomas Hardy: The Guarded Life
Ray Purcell: Lost for a Lifetime: Alexander Masters, Stuart: A Life Backwards
recommendations
Patrick Moore: First Book! G.F. Chambers, The Story of the Solar System
Four Helpings: Milton. Tom Gatti, Jane Shilling, Boyd Tonkin and Erica Wagner
John Scrivener: Augustine's Confessions
Andy Sawyer: Top Twelve SF
Good Books: brief recommendations by Bernadette Crowley and Don Bramwell
Jane Davis: Intrinsic Animality: Ray Tallis, Hippocratic Oaths: Medicine and its Discontents
Susan O'Connor: Winter Reading
Stephen Palmer: Opening the Doors of Perception: J.G. Ballard, The Unlimited Dream Company
the back end
Enid Stubin: Our Spy in NY
Tom Ashley: Old Door
Cassandra: Crossword
Buck's Quiz
Contributors
Quiz and Puzzle Answers