Poetry
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Easter Sunday When I was twelve years old, an aunt and uncle gave me two books for Christmas, both part of a series or set called The Looking Glass Library. These were The Haunted Looking Glass and The Looking Glass Book of Verse. The first was a collection of classic ghost stories, though of course I didn't know
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After posting Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" a couple of weeks ago, I found myself remembering other bits and pieces of his poetry, so I got out a couple of old textbooks and went looking for them. Principal among these fragments was this, which used to be widely quoted: Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The
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Yesterday, I started to write a comment on the Favorites of the Year thread saying that my problem with the thread was that every find that I had last year was a movie or book that I learned about on this blog, so everyone else already knew about them, and we had already discussed them.
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If I were to pick one artist among the singer-songwriters of the 1960s whom I would bet would still be listened to a hundred years from now, it would be Leonard Cohen. I think there will be others, but like I said, if I were to pick only one…. This song, from 1969's Songs From A
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For years I have been seeing this poem by Kipling described as having some sort of profound relevance. I read it, and it seemed interesting, but I didn't quite understand who these gods were supposed to be. It was only fairly recently that I learned the answer. A "copybook" in English schools of the time
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Anthony Daniels, in the February issue of The New Criterion, on the experience of being asked to be one of the judges in a poetry contest: One of the problems for a novice judge is to know how far to take extra-poetic considerations into account, indeed to know what they actually are, especially in an
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Update: My apologies: I thought this poem was available to non-subscribers, but apparently it's not. I'll leave the post here because you can still enjoy the anecdote. It's even possible that you may run across a copy of the magazine somewhere. Thanks to Louise for pointing this out to me. — I don't find most
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Shakespeare in the original pronunciation. Completely fascinating.
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I could go on for a long time–I've already gone on for a couple of months–planning to write a substantial review of this splendid book of poems, with a lot of attention to its specific virtues. The result would be a pretty good appraisal and appreciation. But I have a lot to do, and am
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Should have posted this yesterday (or whenever it was that I first saw it). Go here to get 20% off the price of Sally Thomas's book of poems, Brief Light, today. It's not very expensive to start with, so with the discount it's down around the price of a fast-food lunch, or even one of those elaborate coffee
Light On Dark Water 