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- “I’m not interested in money. I just want to be wonderful.” – Marilyn Monroe
- “[My ambition is to] give something to our literature which will be our own.” — Walt Whitman
- “I don’t want to show things, but to give people the desire to see.” — Agnès Varda
- “I never made a message picture, and I hope I never do.” — Howard Hawks
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- Reviews: Currents (2026)
- Reviews: Forge (2026)
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- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Hamlet
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- Dave on Review: The Chronology of Water (2025)
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Tag Archives: H.D.
“The people must grant a hearing to the best poets they have, else they will never have better.” — Harriet Monroe
“I started in early with Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, with Dickens and Thackeray; and always the book-lined library gave me a friendly assurance of companionship with lively and interesting people, gave me friends of the spirit to ease my loneliness.” – … Continue reading
“Omissions are not accidents.” — poet Marianne Moore
“I disliked the term ‘poetry’ for any but Chaucer’s or Shakespeare’s or Dante’s.” — Marianne Moore T.S. Eliot felt Moore’s poetry was probably the “most durable” of all the greats writing at the time. Sadly, I have no idea how … Continue reading
“I never said, ‘I want to be alone.’ I only said, ‘I want to be left alone.’ There is all the difference.” — Greta Garbo
It’s her birthday today. She is a difficult subject, not just because she was a private woman, but because her onscreen persona was so fluid, mercurial, hard to grasp. Her gestures could be operatic and swanlike (watch Grand Hotel), but … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, Movies, On This Day
Tagged drama, Greta Garbo, H.D., historical drama, silent films, Sweden
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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
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, Ezra Pound, H.D., Harold Bloom, Harriet Monroe, Michael Schmidt, poetry, William Carlos Williams
21 Comments
“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
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, D.H. Lawrence, England, H.D., Harold Bloom, Joan Didion, Michael Schmidt, poetry, Rebecca West, Robert Graves, Tennessee Williams, Thomas Hardy, W.H. Auden
3 Comments
Things that got me through 2020. In no particular order.
Elvis mask, made for me by Jill Blake who was like “I just happened to have this Elvis 68 Comeback Special fabric lying around … do you want a mask?” Do you have to ask? There were so many great … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, Books, Directors, Founding Fathers, Movies, Music, Personal, Television, Theatre
Tagged Alexander Hamilton, Dolly Parton, Elvis Presley, Eminem, family, friends, George Orwell, H.D., Hannah Arendt, Hope, Jackass, Jean Arthur, John Garfield, John Sturges, Johnny Flynn, Lucille Ball, Marcel Proust, Martha Coolidge, Nick Tosches, poetry, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Steve McQueen, Supernatural, Twin Peaks, women directors, X-Files
30 Comments
2020 Books Read
What a year, huh. What a dumpster-fire year. I read a lot, mostly in the mornings, and it helped create rituals for the days, which often seemed endlessly the same, interchangeable. I read a lot of long and challenging books … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Austria, ballet, Ballets Russes, Belfast, Biography, books read, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Czeslaw Milosz, dance, Dubravka Ugrešić, Elinor Lipman, Elizabeth Bishop, Eminem, essays, Ezra Pound, fiction, H.D., Hannah Arendt, Hitler, Ireland, Jane Austen, Jean Arthur, Marcel Proust, Nick Tosches, nonfiction, Olivia Laing, poetry, Poland, politics, Rebecca West, Robert Kaplan, Roman empire, Russia, Ryszard Kapuściński, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Shirley Jackson, Stalin, true crime, Ukraine, war, WWII, Yugoslavia
38 Comments
Year in Review: Running my mouth in 2020, Part 1
What a year. Hard to say “the worst” because I was at least somewhat mentally stable during 2020, but this year was an assault. An assault after a couple of years of exhausting assault. It was an assault on us … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, Directors, Movies, RIP
Tagged Arizona Dream, Aubrey Plaza, Australia, Derek Mahon, Dorothy Arzner, Eavan Boland, England, Faye Dunaway, Germany, H.D., hockey, Iranian film, Jane Austen, Jean Arthur, Jerry Lewis, John Sturges, Johnny Depp, Jonathan Demme, Josephine Decker, Kurt Russell, Lili Taylor, Linda Manz, Little Richard, Lucille Ball, Martha Coolidge, Maureen O'Hara, miracle on ice, Nick Nolte, Patricia Bosworth, Shirley Jackson, Steve McQueen, Supernatural, women directors, year in writing
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For Film Comment: on H.D. and the film journal Close Up
The piece I referenced a while back, the one I had been working on for about 4 months, researching from this towering stack of books, has finally gone live over on Film Comment. It’s a doozy. Get a cup of … Continue reading