Hello, goddammit.  That’s how I answered the phone this morning at 07:00 when it rang.  I knew who it was.  Only one person on the planet is abjectly stupid enough to call me at such an unholy hour on the Lord’s Day.  It was, of course, Mgmt.

Mgmt: Well I wouldn’t have to call you on “the Lord’s Day” if you’d send me my pages when you’re supposed to.
Me: Easy, cheesy…these are not “your” pages…they are mine, and I’ll send them when I’m damn well good and ready.
Mgmt: Relax…you need to relax.  You shouldn’t be this tense so early on a weekend day.
Me: I swear to Christ the next time I see you, I will throttle you!  Do you hear me?  Throttled!  Have you ever been throttled before?
Mgmt: Well, if I…
Me: Shut up.  It doesn’t matter. Don’t call me at 7 in the goddamn morning, give me some low-rent shit about my writing, and then tell me to relax!  You relax.  Why the fuck are you even so awake now?  Shouldn’t you be recovering from last night?
Mgmt: What happened last night?
Me: You tell me!  You’re at least 30 years younger than me…you’re supposed to me out drinking beer and watching movies and writhing to suggestive music, not worrying about what I’m writing or being awake to call me at 7 in the morning!

This went on, dear reader, for a good 15 minutes before I was able to convince him to call me back once he calmed down so we could have a reasonable conversation like reasonable adults. That was my morning.  Now on to more pleasant business.

Today we’ll roll back to 1667, when John Milton, blind as a bat and broke as hell, sold Paradise Lost to a publisher for a measly £10—£10, man, for one of the most gut-wrenching, mind-bending epics ever scrawled by human hand. That’s not bad for a poem, freshmen will say, to which I can only reply Ha!  This wasn’t “a poem,” you nebbish; it’s a 12-book, cosmic-level brawl, a literary grenade of rebellion, Satan, and the whole damn fall of man. Milton, with his puritanical fire and a brain that could out-think God Himself, poured every ounce of his defiant soul into this beast, redefining literary ambition while staring down the political heat of Restoration England. He died before the second edition dropped, but not before he’d flipped a double-barreled middle finger to the universe, daring anyone to underestimate the sheer, unadulterated ferocity of the underdog. That second edition? Another £10 promised, like a cosmic IOU for a work that’d echo through the ages.  Milton built a monument to the human spirit’s refusal to bow down.

Paradise Lost is Milton at his most feral, a blind poet channeling the Almighty’s own wrath and heartbreak into a sprawling, 10,000-line odyssey that makes you feel the weight of eternity in your bones. Satan’s the star here, and Milton gives him all kinds of swagger—a rebel angel who’d rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven, spitting in God’s eye with every fiery monologue. But don’t get it twisted; this isn’t just a devil’s joyride. Milton’s got Adam and Eve, the Garden, the Fall, all of it woven with a theological ferocity that hits like a freight train. The man was writing from the edge—politically hunted, physically broken, yet still swinging for the fences with a vision so vast it redefines what poetry can do. Every line drips with the kind of desperate, electric energy you feel when you’re staring down the abyss and decide to jump in anyway. Milton threw down a gauntlet, daring every writer since to match his unhinged, celestial audacity. And that, dear reader, is why John Milton is a charter member of the Dead Poets Society.

N.P.: “Pump Up The Jam” – Death in Rome