Getting a Jump on 'Paradise Lost'

If you're following along with the bloggers in the sidebar, you may be familiar with 'The Western Tradition' blog.  Over there Dr J is making his way through the Great Books but he's doing it in a slightly different fashion than I am.  He is covering more ground (much more) and at a faster pace. 
Each week he announces what he'll be working on for the next week and offers comments on the previous pieces.  Yesterday he mentioned that he's starting 'Paradise Lost', which he calls the greatest poem in the English language.  As I've mentioned before, poetry is something of a blind spot for me.  Long, epic poems intimidate me and 'Paradise Lost' is something I've been dreading a bit. 
With that in mind, I'm going to follow along with Dr J.  It looks like he's covering one 'book' per week.  If so, this will be done over the next twelve weeks.  If you're also intimidated by long poems, this might be a good way to help yourself out. 
'Paradise Lost' comes up on our list in August of year three.  I plan on simply taking notes and leaving them in a journal so that I can brush up and be ready again two years from now.  You can easily do the same.