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Tag Archives: George Orwell
“I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.” — George Orwell
Orwell was born on this day. When Animal Farm was released in a new edition, Christopher Hitchens wrote specifically about the quote from Orwell shown in the title above. Very few people can “face unpleasant facts”. Hitchens: A commissar who … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged 1984, Animal Farm, dystopia, England, essays, George Orwell, nonfiction, politics, Russia, war
7 Comments
“My dear child, I’m sure we shall be allowed to laugh in Heaven!” — Edward Lear
Edward Lear (the “father of nonsense”) was born on this day in 1812 in London. I could recite from memory a lot of his stuff when I was pretty close to the age I was in the “candid” photo above. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Edward Lear, England, George Orwell, poetry
15 Comments
“I did not begin to write poetry in earnest until the really emotional part of my life was over.” — poet A.E. Housman
OUCH. He was born in 1859 and he died in 1936. His generation saw so much change it boggles the mind, and I say that as a member of a generation who grew up sans internet – I didn’t get … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged England, George Orwell, Harold Bloom, Hugh MacDiarmid, Lanford Wilson, Michael Schmidt, Philip Larkin, poetry, William Faulkner
1 Comment
“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
“I love to lose myself in other men’s minds. Books think for me.” — Charles Lamb
Charles Lamb was friends with everyone. He knew Coleridge from childhood, Wordsworth, William Hazlitt (great writer and portrait painter – Hazlitt did the painting above), Lamb met Keats, he was inner circle with these guys. He was different, though. He … Continue reading
“Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination…think twice before you think.” — E.E. Cummings
It’s his birthday today. I responded to E.E. Cummings in a visceral way when I first had to read his stuff in high school. I didn’t know what it was all about, but I loved the syntax, the unmistakable look … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged E.E. Cummings, Elizabeth Bishop, George Orwell, Harriet Monroe, Michael Schmidt
9 Comments
“Sunlight on a broken column.” — T.S. Eliot
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 voice, his way, became THE way. (Interestingly enough, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Algernon Charles Swinburne, Camille Paglia, Christopher Hitchens, E.M. Forster, Edith Sitwell, Edmund Spenser, Elizabeth Bishop, George Orwell, Harold Bloom, Harriet Monroe, Hart Crane, Henry James, Jeanette Winterson, John Dryden, John Milton, Lord Byron, Marianne Moore, Matthew Arnold, Michael Schmidt, Philip Larkin, poetry, Rebecca West, Robert Graves, T.S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, Wallace Stevens, William Blake, William Carlos Williams, William Shakespeare
23 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
Orwell’s “nightmare world”
From George Orwell’s essential essay “Looking Back on the Spanish War”, where he reflects on all the lies and falsifications of that essential conflict, the rehearsal for Hitler-Stalin and all the monstrousness that followed. (It is the Spanish civil war … Continue reading