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Tag Archives: Hugh MacDiarmid
“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, Shakespeare, Ted Hughes, Thomas Hardy, W.H. Auden
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“Gie me ae spark o’ nature’s fire / That’s a’ the learning I desire…” — Robert Burns, “the Ploughman Poet” of Scotland
“For my own part I never had the least thought or inclination of turning poet till I got once heartily in Love, and then Rhyme and Song were, in a manner, the spontaneous language of my heart.” — Robert Burns … Continue reading
“Poetry in my opinion must be honest before anything else and I refuse to be ‘objective’ or clear-cut at the cost of honesty.” — Louis MacNeice
“Self-assertion more often than not is vulgar, but a live and vulgar dog who keeps on barking is better than a dead lion, however dignified.” — Louis MacNeice Born in Belfast on this day in 1907, Louis MacNeice went to … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Belfast, Elizabeth Bishop, Hugh MacDiarmid, Ireland, Irish poetry, Louis MacNeice, Michael Schmidt, poetry, W.H. Auden
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“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
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“[My function] in Scotland during the past twenty to thirty years [is] that of the cat-fish that vitalizes the other torpid denizens of the aquarium.” –Hugh MacDiarmid
The function, as it seems to me, O’ Poetry is to bring to be At lang, lang last that unity … — Hugh MacDiarmid, “A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle” It’s his birthday today. He was born on August … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce, On This Day, writers
Tagged Finnegans Wake, Hugh MacDiarmid, Michael Schmidt, poetry, Scotland, Seamus Heaney, T.S. Eliot
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