Here Is Why the Classics   Zbigniew Herbert’s poem “Dlaczego klasycy” (Why the Classics) has called out to me for a long while, as did W.B. Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium” until I wrote about it. And so I am writing about Herbert’s poem. It gives its history lesson by pulling the reader into the here and now. Yeats instructs by displaying for the reader Yeats’s golden perch outside history. Herbert plants his and the reader’s feet in history, concluding (in […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: Edward Snowden, History, humility, John Kerry, poetry, Thucydides, Zbigniew Herbert