Tag Archives: Harold Bloom

“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 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 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 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

“He who has never felt, momentarily, what madness is has but a mouthful of brains.” — Herman Melville

“Old nineteenth-century New England must have been fearful–in what other country would Thoreau, Melville, Whitman and Dickinson have been so overlooked?” — Robert Lowell, letter to Elizabeth Bishop, December 12, 1958 Herman Melville was born on this day in 1819. … Continue reading

Posted in Books, On This Day, writers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Happy Birthday, Emily Brontë: “a solitude-loving raven, no gentle dove”

“My sister Emily loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; — out of a sullen hollow in a livid hill-side, her mind could make an Eden. She found in the … Continue reading

Posted in Books, On This Day, writers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

“I do not write for the public.” — poet Gerard Manley Hopkins

“I shall shortly have some sonnets to send you, five or more. Four of these came like inspirations unbidden and against my will. And in the life I lead now, which is one of a continually jaded and harassed mind, … Continue reading

Posted in Books, On This Day, writers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

“The rhythm is jazz.” — Hart Crane

“What I want to get is … an ‘interior’ form, a form that is so thorough and intense as to dye the words themselves with a pecularity of meaning, slightly different maybe from the ordinary definition of them separate from … Continue reading

Posted in Books, On This Day, writers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

“That is no country for old men.” — William Butler Yeats

“I thought we might bring the halves together if we had a national literature that made Ireland beautiful in the memory, and yet had been freed of provincialism by an exacting criticism, a European pose.” — W.B. Yeats William Butler … Continue reading

Posted in Books, On This Day, writers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

“Language most shows a man. Speak that I may see thee.” — Ben Jonson

“O rare Benn Johnson.” — Jonson’s incorrectly-spelled epitaph in Westminster Abbey It’s his birthday today. Ben Jonson did everything. Plays, poems, satires, elegies, epigrams. His talent was wide and flexible. Everything he wrote feels inevitable. However, as Michael Schmidt writes … Continue reading

Posted in Books, On This Day, Theatre, writers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Twelfth Night: or, What You Will

My progress: Shakespeare Reading Project Henry VI, parts 1, 2, 3 and Richard III Two Gentlemen of Verona The Taming of the Shrew Titus Andronicus The Comedy of Errors Love’s Labour’s Lost Romeo & Juliet A Midsummer Night’s Dream Richard … Continue reading

Posted in Theatre | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

“Literature is the written expression of revolt against expected things.” Happy Birthday to the least happy man ever, Thomas Hardy

“A certain provincialism of feeling is invaluable. It is the essence of individuality, and is largely made up of that crude enthusiasm without which no great thoughts are thought, no great deeds done.” — Thomas Hardy That quote above from … Continue reading

Posted in Books, On This Day, writers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments