Tag Archives: Harriet Monroe

“Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination…think twice before you think.” — E.E. Cummings

Posted on October 14, 2025 by sheila

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 →

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“Sunlight on a broken column.” — T.S. Eliot

Posted on September 26, 2025 by sheila

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 →

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“Writing. Love is writing.” — poet H.D., HERmione

Posted on September 10, 2025 by sheila

“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 →

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“Since we do float on an unknown sea I think we should examine the other floating things that come our way very carefully.” — poet Elizabeth Bishop

Posted on February 8, 2025 by sheila

“All the intellectuals were communist except me. I’m always very perverse so I went in for T.S. Eliot and Anglo-Catholicism.”– Elizabeth Bishop Elizabeth Bishop, born on this day, is one of my favorite poets. She didn’t write all that many … Continue reading →

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“The people must grant a hearing to the best poets they have, else they will never have better.” — Harriet Monroe

Posted on December 23, 2024 by sheila

“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 →

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It’s Ezra Pound’s Birthday: “Do not retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose.”

Posted on October 30, 2021 by sheila

And give up verse, my boy, There’s nothing in it. — Ezra Pound I grew up hearing stories of Ezra Pound. Not the stories of his fascism or his relaxing time in a cage in Italy, or being indicted for … Continue reading →

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