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Tag Archives: England
“I just sat at the drums and said, ‘Can I have a go?’ I just took to it.” — Honey Lantree
It’s her birthday. Even now, a “girl drummer” in an all-boy band is a rare thing. Back in the 1960s, it was unheard of. Which is why Honey Lantree, drummer for the Joe Meek-produced The Honeycombs, stands out. Still. When … Continue reading
“There’s no one ‘right’ way of making a science fiction movie; there’s no one way of making any kind of movie, really!” — Nicolas Roeg
It’s his birthday today. When he died, I wrote a tribute for the Jan/Feb 2019 issue of Film Comment.
“Yeah, and I’m buddies with Alfred.” — Eminem on Alfred Hitchcock
For Alfred Hitchcock’s birthday. “It got silent, then all these voices said ‘Come follow me into the gates of Hell.’ I heard ’em yell ‘Welcome to the Norman Bates Motel!’ I ring the bell for service and I was greeted … Continue reading
Posted in Directors, Movies, Music, On This Day
Tagged Alfred Hitchcock, Eminem, England, Psycho
1 Comment
“One day I hope I can write happier poems, but most of the things I think about aren’t very cheerful.” — poet Philip Larkin
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, one doesn’t STUDY poets! You READ them and think, That’s marvelous, how is it done, could I do it? and that’s how you learn. At the end of it you can’t say, That’s Yeats, that’s Auden, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Christopher Hitchens, Elizabeth Bishop, England, Michael Schmidt, Philip Larkin, poetry
11 Comments
“Tennyson’s rank is too well fixed and we love him too much.” — Oscar Wilde
He was not only a minor Virgil, he is also with Virgil as Dante saw him, a Virgil among the Shades, the saddest of all English poets. – T.S. Eliot It’s Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s birthday, born on August 6, 1809. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce, On This Day, writers
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Camille Paglia, Dorothy Parker, Ellen Terry, England, Ezra Pound, George Orwell, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Harold Bloom, Ireland, Jeanette Winterson, L.M. Montgomery, Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Michael Schmidt, Oscar Wilde, Philip Larkin, poetry, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ralph Waldo Emerson, T.S. Eliot, Thomas Hardy, W.H. Auden
11 Comments
“Poets, the best of them, are a very chameleonic race.” — Percy Bysshe Shelley
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, Dorothy Parker, England, Ernest Hemingway, Gerard Manley Hopkins, H.L. Mencken, Harold Bloom, John Keats, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Matthew Arnold, Michael Schmidt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, poetry, Robert Graves, T.S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, William Carlos Williams
14 Comments
Happy Birthday, Emily Brontë: “a solitude-loving raven, no gentle dove”
“My sister Emily loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; — out of a sullen hollow in a livid hill-side, her mind could make an Eden. She found in the … Continue reading
“I do not write for the public.” — poet Gerard Manley Hopkins
“I shall shortly have some sonnets to send you, five or more. Four of these came like inspirations unbidden and against my will. And in the life I lead now, which is one of a continually jaded and harassed mind, … Continue reading
“The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.” –Robert Conquest
“I think once you accept that you have the answer to everything, you can do anything to bring it about because your enemies are trying to stop you, are enemies of reason, of truth of everything – enemies of the … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged England, nonfiction, politics, Robert Conquest, Russia, Sergei Kirov, Stalin, The Great Terror, war
3 Comments
“All I actually wanted was for my work to be useful.”–Claudius Afolabi Siffre
In troubled times, when the heart is weary or scared or tired, a voice like Labi Siffre’s doesn’t just comfort. It heals. Or, at the very least, it creates a space where healing can happen, where healing is possible. To … Continue reading