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Tag Archives: John Milton
“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
“My thoughts bustle along like a Surinam toad, with little toads sprouting out of back, side, and belly, vegetating while it crawls.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
He looked at his own Soul with a telescope. What seemed all irregular, he saw and shewed to be beautiful Constellations: and he added to the Consciousness hidden worlds within worlds. –Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Notebooks It’s his birthday today. I’ll … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Andrew Marvell, Anne Fadiman, Ben Jonson, Camille Paglia, Charles Lamb, Derek Mahon, Edmund Spenser, Elizabeth Bishop, England, Jane Langton, John Donne, John Dryden, John Keats, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Lord Byron, Michael Schmidt, poetry, Rudyard Kipling, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Stevie Smith, T.S. Eliot, Thomas Carlyle, William Hazlitt, William Wordsworth
29 Comments
“Sunlight on a broken column.” — T.S. Eliot
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
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Algernon Charles Swinburne, Camille Paglia, Christopher Hitchens, E.M. Forster, Edith Sitwell, Edmund Spenser, Elizabeth Bishop, George Orwell, Harold Bloom, Harriet Monroe, Hart Crane, Henry James, Jeanette Winterson, John Dryden, John Milton, Lord Byron, Marianne Moore, Matthew Arnold, Michael Schmidt, Philip Larkin, poetry, Rebecca West, Robert Graves, Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, Wallace Stevens, William Blake, William Carlos Williams
23 Comments
Happy Birthday, Galileo Galilei: “Eppur si muove.”
Sometimes I remember that pre-Paradise-Lost John Milton traveled to Italy and met with Galileo, who was under house arrest at the time, and it’s such an awe-inspiring and bizarre image I feel like I must have made it up. Milton … Continue reading
2017 Books Read
I got into a good rhythm with reading this year. I did a lot of re-reading, going back to books I haven’t read in 20 years or whatever. It was fun, like a reunion with an old friend. Much of … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged 1984, A.S. Byatt, Bette Davis, books read, Camille Paglia, Christopher Hitchens, Edgar Allan Poe, England, France, George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, Herman Melville, Hitler, Ireland, Jack London, Janet Malcolm, Jean Renoir, Jeanette Winterson, Joan Crawford, Joan Didion, John Milton, Kim Stanley, Mark Danielewski, Mary Astor, Mary Gaitskill, Olivia Laing, Poland, politics, Robert Altman, Robert Conquest, Robert Kaplan, Russia, S.E. Hinton, Shirley Jackson, Tana French, Tennessee Williams, The Great Terror, war
4 Comments
The Books: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, ‘Scorn Not the Sonnet’, by Anne Fadiman
On the essays shelf: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, by Anne Fadiman I haven’t read Anne Fadiman’s book in a long time. It’s a bit radio-active with my father, and so I am glad that I own it … Continue reading
Happy Birthday, John Milton
Milton! thou should’st be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancieng English dower Of inward … Continue reading
The Books: Paradise Lost, by John Milton
Daily Book Excerpt: Poetry. Next book on the shelf: Paradise Lost, by John Milton. Milton, with the possible exception of Spenser, is the first eccentric English poet, the first to make a myth out of his personal experience, and to … Continue reading
The Books: Six Centuries of Great Poetry: A Stunning Collection of Classic British Poems from Chaucer to Yeats: John Milton
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 I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that … Continue reading
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