Category Archives: Writing
A Fountain in Berlin
In her National Book Award acceptance speech, Ursula K. Le Guin said: ‘Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies … Continue reading
Winter Stars
Winter drags on – though the stars keep turning time and appearing consolingly on the horizon telling stories to while away long nights. http://astronomypictureoftheday.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/coma-cluster-in-coma-berenices-constellation
Trepidation
I have always liked Sylvia Plath’s Miss Drake proceeds to Supper with its unexpected compassion and tenderness. This one is rather less so: she proceeds to breakfast like a bating eagle she steps through the door <> jasmine, lobelia, … Continue reading
Ginsberg’s Howl
Splendid Labyrinth of Commerce I I have seen the season’s best styles pausing on the bridges, posing – thrilled by or oblivious of the masses, who stopped in their tracks, who spilled from the calle into the campo, stupefied with … Continue reading
the very flame of love
It sounds enchanting doesn’t it – the very flame of love; but it is Claudius speaking and the full quotation is: ‘There lives within the very flame of love/a kind of wick or snuff that will abate it’. Which is … Continue reading
Apples
I did not know there was such a thing as Apple day – which has on events calendars become almost an apple month. This seems both quaint and delightful, as does the apple to me now. Its vast variety (and yes, … Continue reading
tiny exuberance
having utterly failed to get on with Lowell or Gertrude Stein (tracing back lines from E. E. Cummings) I turned to H.D. and other Imagists. All I can say is, I understood them better, though Lowell was among them. Also … Continue reading
Calendar
Have been reading too much that is contradictory, perhaps, to find an emulation this week. Gertrude Stein – who remains a puzzle so far, Amy Lowell’s bejewelled sentiment and Elizabeth Bishop’s restraint and attention. And as if that were not … Continue reading
Derrida and Rhyme?
There has been a long silence, and my protestant worker’s soul is squirming. The silence was partly because I have been away on holiday (in Venice, another squirm for my usually quiescent religious Protestantism, but more of that – or … Continue reading
Wine and poetry
Recently I have been to two writing things where people thought that the absence of alcohol was an issue. In some ways people seemed to think the event might be incomplete without it. Is poetry incomplete without alcohol? Does the … Continue reading
Reason plays no part 