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Tag Archives: H.L. Mencken
“If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.” — poet Countee Cullen
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing! — Countee Cullen It’s his birthday today. Cullen is often compared to Langston Hughes (my post on Hughes here), seems a little unfair, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged H.L. Mencken, Harlem Renaissance, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Melvin B. Tolson, poetry
8 Comments
“When I aim at praise, they say I bite.” — Alexander Pope
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
Posted in On This Day, writers
Tagged Alexander Pope, Allen Ginsberg, Camille Paglia, Christopher Smart, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Eminem, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, H.L. Mencken, Jonathan Swift, Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, poetry, T.S. Eliot, Thomas Jefferson, William Blake, William Wordsworth
2 Comments
“Guilt pins a fig-leaf; Innocence is its own adorning.” — poet Anne Spencer
Anne Bethel Scales Bannister Spencer was yet another poet-librarian, like Dudley Randall, and many others. It was part of a tradition, one worthy of more study (there are websites devoted to it!). As the daughter of a librarian, I am … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Anne Spencer, H.L. Mencken, Harlem Renaissance, James Weldon Johnson, poetry
2 Comments
“I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals.” — poet/writer/hater Jonathan Swift
“[He is] the most vigorous hater we’ve ever had in our literature.” — Edgell Rickword We’re not supposed to “hate”. “Hate” calls to mind tiki torches. Or “hate crimes.” But there is a productive kind of hate. A galvanizing hate. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Alexander Pope, Charlotte Bronte, Dr. Samuel Johnson, fiction, Gulliver's Travels, H.L. Mencken, Ireland, Irish poetry, Jane Eyre, Jonathan Swift, Michael Schmidt, poetry, Rebecca West, Robert Graves, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats
12 Comments
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” — H.L. Mencken
“You know what H.L. Mencken said one time about religious people? He said he’d been greatly misunderstood. He said he didn’t hate them. He simply found them comical.” – Kurt Vonnegut Today is the birthday of one of the greatest … Continue reading
“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
2018 Books Read
2018 Books Read 1. Tamburlaine, Part 1, by Christopher Marlowe I finished 2017 with Paradise Lost, in the mood to continue with rigorous challenging poetry. I decided to read the complete plays of Christopher Marlowe (re-read in most cases). The … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce
Tagged Annie Proulx, books read, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Marlowe, Clifford Odets, Edgar Allan Poe, Evelyn Waugh, fiction, Finnegans Wake, friends, George Orwell, H.L. Mencken, Hunter S. Thompson, Ian McEwan, Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, Kirov, nonfiction, Olivia Laing, Pauline Kael, poetry, Poland, politics, Robert Kaplan, Romania, Ron Chernow, Russia, Ryszard Kapuściński, Stalin, Tom Wolfe, true crime, Truman Capote, Victor Serge
7 Comments
Bookshelf Tour #10
An extremely dog-eared section of my library. These books are rarely on the shelf since I dip into them so often. — The mighty Joan Acocella, dance critic for The New Yorker, but also so much more. Her dance writing … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged bookshelves, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Orwell, H.L. Mencken, Joan Acocella, Lester Bangs, William Hazlitt
4 Comments
