Categories
Archives
-
-
-
-
Recent Posts
- Review: Pompei: Below the Clouds (2026)
- “Since when was genius found respectable?” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- Happy Birthday, Dean Stockwell
- “Character roles definitely age better than your ingenues. You don’t get to keep doing that.” — Catherine O’Hara
- “Silence is necessary to tyrants and occupiers, who take pains to have their actions accompanied by quiet.” — Ryszard Kapuściński
- Jafar Panahi on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show
- 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Romeo & Juliet
- “I wasn’t born an actress, you know. Events made me one.” — Jean Harlow
- “I just love telling stories. That’s what we do and it’s a good business to be in, especially if you know you have talent.” –Jensen Ackles
- “I was going upstream, against the current. I was coming from the North before the North had broken”. — John Montague
Recent Comments
- sheila on R.I.P. Tom Noonan
- dres on Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 2: “Everybody Loves a Clown”
- Dan on R.I.P. Tom Noonan
- dres on Supernatural: Season 2, Episode 1: “In My Time of Dying”
- sheila on Jafar Panahi on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show
- sheila on Review: EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (2026)
- sheila on Review: EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (2026)
- sheila on “I just love telling stories. That’s what we do and it’s a good business to be in, especially if you know you have talent.” –Jensen Ackles
- sheila on “I just love telling stories. That’s what we do and it’s a good business to be in, especially if you know you have talent.” –Jensen Ackles
- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Romeo & Juliet
- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Love’s Labour’s Lost
- dres on Supernatural: Season 1, Episode 22: “Devil’s Trap”
- dres on Supernatural: Season 1, Episode 21: “Salvation”
- Melissa Sutherland on Jafar Panahi on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show
- Iwillbetrue on Review: EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert (2026)
- Kelly C Sedinger on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Romeo & Juliet
- Mike Molloy on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Love’s Labour’s Lost
- dres on Supernatural: Season 1, Episode 20: “Dead Man’s Blood”
- dres on Supernatural: Season 1, Episode 20: “Dead Man’s Blood”
- dres on Supernatural: Season 1, Episode 20: “Dead Man’s Blood”
-
Tag Archives: John Aubrey
“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, Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, W.H. Auden, Walter Savage Landor, William Blake, William Carlos Williams, William Wordsworth
12 Comments
“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, Shakespeare
2 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
“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 Andrew Marvell, Camille Paglia, England, Harold Bloom, John Aubrey, Michael Schmidt, poetry, politics, Six Centuries of Great Poetry, T.S. Eliot
Leave a comment
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, Shakespeare, Six Centuries of Great Poetry
1 Comment
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