Tag Archives: Camille Paglia

“Every day life feels mightier, and what we have the power to be, more stupendous.” — Emily Dickinson

“If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know … Continue reading

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“Thy soul was like a Star and dwelt apart” — William Wordsworth on John Milton

Milton was born on this day in 1608. Although he left Oxford without completing his degree, he remained a thinker, a propagandist/pamphleteer, a scholar till the end of his days. The isolated poet, focused on self and personal emotion, would … Continue reading

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“Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.” — poet/engraver/visionary William Blake

“I mean, don’t you think it’s a little bit excessive?” “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. William Blake.” Pause. “William Blake?” “William Blake!” “William Blake???” “William Blake!!!” — Bull Durham William Blake was a poet virtually … Continue reading

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“I find that I cannot exist without poetry—without eternal poetry—” –John Keats

I was just beautifying him, don’t you know. A thing of beauty, don’t you know. Yeats says, or I mean, Keats says. – James Joyce, Ulysses Born in 1795 on this day, John Keats was orphaned by the time he … Continue reading

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“When the words do come, I pick them so thoroughly of their live associations that only the death in the word remains.” — poet Dylan Thomas

“[My] poems, with all their crudities, doubts and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn fool if they weren’t.” – Dylan Thomas, 1952 Dylan Thomas was born on this … Continue reading

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“My thoughts bustle along like a Surinam toad, with little toads sprouting out of back, side, and belly, vegetating while it crawls.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

He looked at his own Soul with a telescope. What seemed all irregular, he saw and shewed to be beautiful Constellations: and he added to the Consciousness hidden worlds within worlds. –Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Notebooks It’s his birthday today. I’ll … Continue reading

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“Sunlight on a broken column.” It’s T.S. Eliot’s birthday.

Poets like William Carlos Williams and Hart Crane both said that they needed to forcibly divorce themselves from Eliot’s influence in order to be able to write. His language and influence had that strong a pull. Too much pull. His … Continue reading

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Happy Birthday, William Carlos Williams: “My whole life / has hung too long upon a partial victory.”

“No ideas but in things.” – from “Paterson”, by William Carlos Williams The first poems I read of William Carlos Williams, in high school English class, were the red wheelbarrow one and the one about the plums. I imagine that’s … Continue reading

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“All creative art must rise out of a specific soil and flicker with the spirit of place.” — D.H. Lawrence

“Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn’t like it – if he wants a safe seat in the audience – let him read somebody else.” — D.H. Lawrence, 1925 D.H. Lawrence was … Continue reading

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“Writing. Love is writing.” — poet H.D., HERmione

“Words were her plague and words were her redemption.” — H.D. HERmione It’s H.D.’s birthday today. First up: I wrote a gigantic piece about H.D.’s film criticism for Film Comment. Turns out, it was the final piece I wrote for … Continue reading

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