Tag Archives: Camille Paglia

“Poets, the best of them, are a very chameleonic race.” — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Posted on August 4, 2025 by sheila

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 →

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“He who has never felt, momentarily, what madness is has but a mouthful of brains.” — Herman Melville

Posted on August 1, 2025 by sheila

“Old nineteenth-century New England must have been fearful–in what other country would Thoreau, Melville, Whitman and Dickinson have been so overlooked?” — Robert Lowell, letter to Elizabeth Bishop, December 12, 1958 Herman Melville was born on this day in 1819. … Continue reading →

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“The rhythm is jazz.” — Hart Crane

Posted on July 21, 2025 by sheila

“What I want to get is … an ‘interior’ form, a form that is so thorough and intense as to dye the words themselves with a pecularity of meaning, slightly different maybe from the ordinary definition of them separate from … Continue reading →

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“That is no country for old men.” — William Butler Yeats

Posted on June 13, 2025 by sheila

“I thought we might bring the halves together if we had a national literature that made Ireland beautiful in the memory, and yet had been freed of provincialism by an exacting criticism, a European pose.” — W.B. Yeats William Butler … Continue reading →

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“Literature is the written expression of revolt against expected things.” Happy Birthday to the least happy man ever, Thomas Hardy

Posted on June 2, 2025 by sheila

“A certain provincialism of feeling is invaluable. It is the essence of individuality, and is largely made up of that crude enthusiasm without which no great thoughts are thought, no great deeds done.” — Thomas Hardy That quote above from … Continue reading →

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“[My ambition is to] give something to our literature which will be our own.” — Walt Whitman

Posted on May 31, 2025 by sheila

“I like to think that eventually he will shame us into becoming Americans again.” — Guy Davenport on Walt Whitman Whitman is the organizing principle behind my review of Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue. Bob Dylan quotes Whitman all the … Continue reading →

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“When I aim at praise, they say I bite.” — Alexander Pope

Posted on May 21, 2025 by sheila

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! -— Alexander Pope, from “Eloisa to Abelard” Alexander Pope was born on this day in 1688. He was so huge … Continue reading →

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“There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.” — Charlotte Brontë

Posted on April 21, 2025 by sheila

“It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.” — Charlotte Brontë Charlotte Brontë was born on this day, in 1816. … Continue reading →

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“For never has such soothing voice / Been to your shadowy world convey’d…” — Matthew Arnold on William Wordsworth

Posted on April 7, 2025 by sheila

“I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity; the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to … Continue reading →

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“Art indeed is long, but life is short.” — Metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell

Posted on March 31, 2025 by sheila

“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 →

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