Complicated Monsters: Essence and Metamorphosis in Milton

Along with John Rumrich and Stephen Fallon, I have been editing Milton's complete poetry and selected prose.1 I find that he is in certain respects a new poet for me because editors must forfeit the luxury of skipping things. That was indeed a confession. Although I have taught Paradise Lost many times, and probably read it through from beginning to end more than thirty times, possibly more than forty times, and read slowly and carefully certain passages in the poem let's say, on average, four or five per book countless times, to prepare to teach them or write about them, still, despite more than thirty-five years of donating, quality-time attention to Milton, I have done my share of skipping. I am guilty of several varieties of it. Sometimes I just plain skip stop reading, turn a page or two, and resume. Sometimes I lapse into skimming, where the eyes look at all the words and the dull mind issues a blanket confirmation of