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Tag Archives: Camille Paglia
“Art indeed is long, but life is short.” — Metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell
“Andrew Marvell spans three ages like a delicate but serviceable bridge. The first length spans Charles I’s reign and fall, the second spans the Commonwealth, the third the Restoration.” — Michael Schmidt, Lives of the Poets It’s his birthday today. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, England, Harold Bloom, John Aubrey, Michael Schmidt, poetry, politics, Six Centuries of Great Poetry, T.S. Eliot
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“Attention equals Life.” — Frank O’Hara
“I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.” – poet Frank O’Hara It’s his birthday today. First up: I launched my column at Film Comment with a piece about American poet Frank O’Hara’s love of … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, Elizabeth Bishop, Frank O'Hara, Joan Acocella, Lana Turner, Michael Schmidt
18 Comments
“I love humanity but I hate people.” — poet Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on this day in 1892 in Rockland, Maine. “Boys don’t like me anyway because I won’t let them kiss me. It’s just like this: let boys kiss you and they’ll like you but you … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elinor Wylie, Elizabeth Bishop, poetry
16 Comments
“Never write from your head; write from your cock.” — Wystan Hugh Auden
W.H. Auden was born on this day in York, England, 1907. I first encountered Auden in my “Humanities” class, senior year in high school. I got a lot out of that class, and I remember we analyzed Auden’s famous most-anthologized … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, Christopher Hitchens, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, England, George Orwell, Hamlet, Harold Bloom, Hugh MacDiarmid, J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord Tennyson, Louis MacNeice, Marianne Moore, Michael Schmidt, Philip Larkin, poetry, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Thomas Hardy, W.H. Auden, William Shakespeare
23 Comments
“The mood of the Blues is almost always despondency, but when they are sung people laugh.” — Langston Hughes
The Blues always impressed me as being very sad, sadder even than the Spirituals, because their sadness is not softened with tears, but hardened with laughter … of a sadness where there is no god to appeal to. — Langston … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, Countee Cullen, Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, Melvin B. Tolson, Michael Schmidt, poetry
5 Comments
“I doubt sometimes whether a quiet and unagitated life would have suited me–yet I sometimes long for it.” — Lord Byron
— And who is the best poet, Heron? asked Boland. — Lord Tennyson, of course, answered Heron. — O, yes, Lord Tennyson, said Nash. We have all his poetry at home in a book. At this Stephen forgot the silent … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, Christopher Hitchens, Dorothy Parker, Elizabeth Bishop, Elvis Presley, England, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Harold Bloom, Jane Austen, Jeanette Winterson, L.M. Montgomery, Lord Byron, Lord Tennyson, Mary Shelley, Matthew Arnold, Michael Schmidt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, poetry, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Robert Graves, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Six Centuries of Great Poetry, Tennessee Williams, W.H. Auden, Walter Savage Landor, war, William Hazlitt
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“The fault that I acknowledge in myself is to have descended to print anything in verse.” — John Donne
“So difficult and opaque it is, I am not certain what it is I print.” — first publisher of the work of John Donne It’s his birthday today. John Donne (1572-1631) was a poet and an Anglican priest (born a … Continue reading

