“So perhaps I should leave here, go far away…”

“You say I’m a dreamer; we’re two of a kind,” the Saxon theologian Gottschalk wrote to Frankish abbot Walahfrid Strabo in A.D. 848, “both of us searching for some perfect world we know we’ll never find.” Walahfrid never did convince his friend to spurn his heretical ways, but you’re doubly predestined to enjoy these Tuesday links.

Nora Munro, medievalist, responds to Jonathan Franzen’s e-book quips.

Vitoð ér enn, eða hvat? A.S. Byatt revisits Ragnarok.

Anecdotal Evidence: in praise of swink.

Michael Drout ponders why Tolkien’s writing lends itself to recitation.

Wuthering Expectations discovers Portuguese poet Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen.

A Poem a Day answers, twice, “How do I become a poet?”

Dylan looks askance at W.S. Merwin.

Rose Kelleher blurbs a poetry book about office work.

The Rumpus charts T.S. Eliot’s career in banking.

A decade ago, Cynthia Haven visited Cavafy’s flat in Alexandria.

Now she finds Ivanhoe, edited.

Flavia gets her students scanning Shakespeare.

Don’t miss the Richard III play Shakespeare should have written.

Lingwë explores the roots of “Gandalf.”

Dr. Beachcoming digs up Irish giants.

Bill Peschel remembers Dickens on stage.

Jeff Alessandrelli listens as Erik Satie Watusies His Way Into Sound.

Ephemeral New York hears the call of the South Bronx Lorelei.

Australian fantasist Anna Tambour spins a new tale: “Cardoons.”

The great New Jersey band Gaslight Anthem evokes “The ’59 Sound.”