My preferred kind of poetry, hands down, is epic poetry, and this is due mostly in part to the literary devices that it employs. You may have noticed that my first blog post invoked a muse. This was, as you now know, a homage to the likes of Homer, Virgil, and Dante. My favorite rhetorical device however, remains the epic simile; a predisposition for logic and mathematics (which, when you really get down to it, are mostly about drawing parallels and looking for patterns), probably factors heavily into this selection. But what sets the epic simile apart from your run-of-the-mill, garden-variety, salt-of-the-earth, dime-a-dozen, not-worth-writing-home-about, humdrum standard simile? Volume and depth. A terrible poet might pen, thumb and forefinger on chin, eyes speculatively upraised, mouth carefully arranged into a faux-thoughtful grin as he shakes his head back and forth, as if in disbelief at his own genius, "my love is as big as a mountain." John Milton, caring not at all about his demeanor, scrawled that Satan was:

"...in bulk as huge 

As whom the fables name of monstrous size, 

Titanian, or Earth-Born, that warr'd on Jove, 

Briarios or Tyhpon, whom the den 

By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast 

Leviathan, which God of all his works 

Created hugest that swim th' ocean stream: 

Him haply slumbring on the Norway foam 

The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff, 

Deeming some island, oft, as sea-men tell, 

With fixed anchor in his skaly rind 

Moors by his side under the lee, while night 

Invests the sea, and wished morn delayes: 

So stretcht out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay..."

Ahhh...that's the stuff. Of course, analysis can always go on--sometimes the most interesting part about an epic simile is where it fails to apply. 


Today was a day of tests, of challenge. Some problems tend to get a lot more interesting if you view your struggle with them as a personal duel, scoring points as you drive relentlessly towards the truth. I was caught off guard by a momentum transform, but otherwise things went as well as can be expected. The homework grind now begins anew. And always remember: "Divide by two but once, lest you divide by four."


Groceries will have to be purchased tomorrow, and the grand opening of a Trader Joe's Market will hopefully facilitate this need. Also, why do people rail so frequently and vociferously against the passive voice? They are jealous, that's why.


To compensate for all this artsy-fartsiness, I vow that tomorrow's villain will be from an action movie (that is to say, he will have caused actual explosions), but my policies being stalwartly against the famed bait-and-switch, today's villain of choice shall be Milton's Satan:

Satan is an extremely interesting character for far more than his already-mentioned size. Cast down from heaven for revolting against God's omnipotence, he acts (oddly) as the epic's hero for the first few books of Paradise Lost. His soliloquies about revenge and repentance are especially engaging. Satan's most frightening ability is his fantastic charisma, with which he, in Saruman-esque fashion, manages to convince a good portion of heaven's angels that things would be better than their current perfection if he was in charge and later rebamboozle his army out of justifiably despising him for earning them eternal damnation into hailing him as a hero.