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Tag Archives: Dorothy Parker
“I wrote as much as seventy lines at one time, and used to go shouting them about the fields after dark.” — Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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
“Ballet taught me to stay close to style and tone. Literature taught me to be concerned about the moral life.” — Joan Acocella
Joan Acocella, longtime dance critic for The New Yorker, and regular contributor to the New York Review of Books died in 2024 at the age of 78, and I did not mark her passing. It’s her birthday today. Acocella brought … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged ballet, Bob Fosse, dance, Dorothy Parker, essays, H.L. Mencken, Joan Acocella, Martha Graham, nonfiction, Nureyev, Primo Levi
2 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
“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
10 Comments
“I was never afraid of failure, for I would sooner fail than not to be among the greatest.” –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 at fifteen. Because his … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce, On This Day, writers
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Anne Spencer, Camille Paglia, Countee Cullen, Dorothy Parker, Elizabeth Bishop, England, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Harold Bloom, John Keats, Katherine Mansfield, L.M. Montgomery, Lord Byron, Louis MacNeice, Matthew Arnold, Michael Schmidt, Oscar Wilde, Percy Bysshe Shelley, poetry, Robert Burns, Robert Graves, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Seamus Heaney, Six Centuries of Great Poetry, T.S. Eliot, Ulysses, W.B. Yeats, William Carlos Williams, William Faulkner
19 Comments
“A ‘smartcracker’ they called me, and that makes me sick and unhappy.” — Dorothy Parker
“Oh, good Lord, what’s the matter with women, anyway?” “Please don’t call me ‘women,’” she said. “I’m sorry, darling,” he said. “I didn’t mean to use bad words.” — Dorothy Parker, “Dusk Before Fireworks” It’s her birthday today. I cannot … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Dorothy Parker, E.M. Forster, Edna St. Vincent Millay, essays, fiction, Oscar Wilde, poetry
18 Comments
January 2023 Viewing Diary
Friday Night Lights No time like the present. I binged this entire series in a couple weeks. This took commitment, and a couple days of sick leave, while trapped in my hotel room in Memphis, too sick to move. I … Continue reading
Posted in Monthly Viewing Diary, Movies, Television
Tagged Aubrey Plaza, Baz Luhrmann, Bette Davis, biopic, Cary Grant, comedy, documentary, Dorothy Parker, drama, Eddie Cochran, Elvis Presley, film noir, Hedy Lamarr, Hungary, Italy, Jean Renoir, Little Richard, Poland, Pre-Code, Ralph Bellamy, Raoul Walsh, reviews, Spencer Tracy, Teresa Wright, true crime, William Wyler, women directors
9 Comments
Stuff I’ve Been Reading
— “The Secret Oral History of Bennington: The 1980s’ Most Decadent College” is so freakin’ lit. I don’t even know what else to say. — Nick Pinkteron and C. Spencer Yeh have a lengthy conversation about the Marvel movies. It’s … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Dorothy Parker, Hannah Arendt, Janet Malcolm, Pauline Kael, Rebecca West, stuff I've been reading
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