Donald M. Hassler received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1967, taught in Montreal prior to that, and then taught English at Kent State University until retiring in 2014; extrap@Kent.edu. He has published books on Erasmus Darwin, Arthur Machen and others and has published poems in Academic Questions, most recently “Still Life Art,” (Winter, 2018).
“What, if I live, I hope to do”
John Keats, in a private letter
This is a personal essay in a divided time, an essay of sentiment, and certainly an odyssey of sorts, a journey of changing ideas. I think it is part of a genre of journey essays from liberalism to conservatism, from hopeful and elaborate abstractions to personal freedom and personal responsibility. I have read some of these intellectual odysseys, and read about them, in Academic Questionssince I first discovered this
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