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Tag Archives: John Aubrey
“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
“Art indeed is long, but life is short.” — Metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell
“Andrew Marvell spans three ages like a delicate but serviceable bridge. The first length spans Charles I’s reign and fall, the second spans the Commonwealth, the third the Restoration.” — Michael Schmidt, Lives of the Poets It’s his birthday today. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, England, Harold Bloom, John Aubrey, Michael Schmidt, poetry, politics, Six Centuries of Great Poetry, T.S. Eliot
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“I take it to be my portion in this life, joined with a strong propensity of nature, to leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die.” — John Milton
Milton was born on this day in 1608. Although he left Oxford without completing his degree, he remained a thinker, a propagandist/pamphleteer, a scholar till the end of his days. The isolated poet, focused on self and personal emotion, would … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Alexander Pope, Camille Paglia, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Bishop, England, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Harold Bloom, John Aubrey, John Dryden, John Milton, Matthew Arnold, Michael Schmidt, poetry, Robert Burns, Robert Graves, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, T.S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, W.H. Auden, Walter Savage Landor, William Blake, William Carlos Williams, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth
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“Look in thy heart and write.” — Sir Philip Sidney
“[The poet] doth grow in effect another nature, as the Heroes, Demigods, Cyclopes, Chimeras, Furies, and such like: so as he goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely, ranging only … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, England, Harold Bloom, John Aubrey, Michael Schmidt, poetry, William Shakespeare
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The Books: Six Centuries of Great Poetry: A Stunning Collection of Classic British Poems from Chaucer to Yeats: Sir Philip Sidney
Daily Book Excerpt: Poetry Six Centuries of Great Poetry: A Stunning Collection of Classic British Poems from Chaucer to Yeats, edited by Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine As I mentioned in my first post about this nice little anthology, … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged John Aubrey, Michael Schmidt, poetry, Six Centuries of Great Poetry, William Shakespeare
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Happy Birthday, John Milton
John Milton turns 401 today. Last year, New York went all out in celebrating his birthday – with exhibits, art installations, even a costume ball. I love living here. Milton has the kind of genius that is best not talked … Continue reading
Happy 400th birthday, John Milton
I am a baffled and awe-inspired fan. He has the kind of genius that is best not talked about too much. Just leave it be. Don’t try to ask why, or HOW … (I can’t help it: HOW????????) Just accept … Continue reading
November 21: “He was wont to say that man was but a great mischievous baboon”
Excerpted from Christopher Morley’s A Book of Days: Being a Briefcase packed for his own Pleasure: NOVEMBER 21, SAT. 1931 He did delight to be in the darke, and told me he could then best contemplate. He had a house … Continue reading
National Poetry Month: Ben Jonson
On My First Son Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy; My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy. Seven years wert thou leant to me, and I thee pay, Exacted by thy fate, on the … Continue reading
National Poetry Month: John Milton
John Milton. Paradise Lost is one of those things we had to read in high school – which … could we even understand a word of it?? I re-read it in, I think, 2000 – and found it to be … Continue reading