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

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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

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“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

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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

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