-
Recent Posts
- “I don’t cook and I don’t care.” — Ann-Margret
- “Sometimes I think no matter how one is born, no matter how one acts, there is something out of gear with one somewhere, and that must be changed. Life at its best is a grand corrective.” –Jessie Redmon Fauset
- “I’ve had my best times trailing a Mainbocher evening gown across a sawdust floor. I’ve always loved high style in low company.” — Anita Loos
- Substack: An interview with screenwriter Bonnie Gross about her script Lady Parts
- “I would rather take a photograph than be one.” — Lee Miller
- When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, / Hath put a spirit of youth in everything …
- Substack: On Radu Jude’s latest, Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World
- “After all, when God created Adam and Eve, they were stark naked. And in the Garden of Eden, God was probably naked as a jaybird too!” — Bettie Page
- “Good acting is thinking in front of the camera. I just do that and apply a sense of humor to it. You have to trust the audience to get it.” — Charles Grodin
- “What is important is to continue believing in the Irish language as a vibrant creative power while it continues to be marginalised in the process of cultural McDonaldisation.” — poet Michael Davitt
Recent Comments
- Jay G on March 2024 Viewing Diary
- sheila on My new column at Liberties magazine: First up: acting and film criticism and how the twain meet
- sheila on My new column at Liberties magazine: First up: acting and film criticism and how the twain meet
- sheila on “I would rather take a photograph than be one.” — Lee Miller
- sheila on “I would rather take a photograph than be one.” — Lee Miller
- Clary on “I would rather take a photograph than be one.” — Lee Miller
- Lyrie on My new column at Liberties magazine: First up: acting and film criticism and how the twain meet
- sheila on “Good acting is thinking in front of the camera. I just do that and apply a sense of humor to it. You have to trust the audience to get it.” — Charles Grodin
- Stevie on “Good acting is thinking in front of the camera. I just do that and apply a sense of humor to it. You have to trust the audience to get it.” — Charles Grodin
- Bradford Lowell Drake on The Books: “Thomas Jefferson : Author of America” (Christopher Hitchens)
- David Benson on “For I, the chiefest lamp of all the earth…” — Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine
- Sheila on March 2024 Viewing Diary
- Biff Dorsey on March 2024 Viewing Diary
- Robert Valente on For Joseph Cotten’s birthday: Gaslight: His Listening Is Active
- Anne Whitehouse on 2023 Books Read
- sheila on My new column at Liberties magazine: First up: acting and film criticism and how the twain meet
- Jessie on My new column at Liberties magazine: First up: acting and film criticism and how the twain meet
- sheila on My new column at Liberties magazine: First up: acting and film criticism and how the twain meet
- sheila on My new column at Liberties magazine: First up: acting and film criticism and how the twain meet
- sheila on “For I am of the seed of the WELCH WOMAN and speak the truth from my heart.” Happy Birthday, Poet Christopher Smart
Categories
Archives
-
Tag Archives: John Montague
“I was going upstream, against the current. I was coming from the North before the North had broken”. — Northern Irish poet John Montague
It’s his birthday today. John Montague has great sentimental value to me. He was one of my father’s favorite poets. I remember being at home – some years ago, it had to be pre-covid (sob) – and Mum pulled out … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Ireland, Irish poetry, John Montague, poetry
Leave a comment
“Before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.” — Irish poet Austin Clarke
“He cleared a non-Yeatsian space in which an Irish poet might build a confident poetry in English for which the term ‘Anglo-Irish’ is meaningless.” – Michael Schmidt, Lives of the Poets Austin Clarke was born in Dublin on this day … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce, On This Day, writers
Tagged Austin Clarke, Edna O'Brien, Ireland, Irish poetry, John Montague, Michael Schmidt, poetry, Robert Frost, Thomas Kinsella, W.B. Yeats
2 Comments
“Is there any virtue, for literature, for poetry, in the simple continuity of a tradition? I believe there is not.” — Irish poet Thomas Kinsella
The Dolmen Press, operated out of Dublin, was founded in 1951 by Liam Miller, and played a crucial part in the development of Irish poetry in the mid-20th century. It was a strictly nationalist operation; before The Dolmen Press, poets … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Austin Clarke, Ezra Pound, Ireland, Irish poetry, John Montague, Michael Schmidt, poetry, Seamus Heaney, Thomas Kinsella, W.B. Yeats
Leave a comment
Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people
A couple years ago, my father told me to read this poem. It was one of his favorites. Like Dolmens Round My Childhood, The Old People by John Montague Like dolmens round my childhood, the old people. Jamie MacCrystal sang … Continue reading
Books I bought online in a fugue state on December 29
They are all arriving now, and it feels, already, like visitations from a ghost of the long-distant past. — The letters of Maud Gonne and WB Yeats — Maud Gonne’s autobiography — Shane Leslie’s memoirs — Conor Cruise O’Brien’s memoirs … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce
Tagged family, Ireland, John Montague, Maud Gonne, Shane Leslie, W.B. Yeats
Leave a comment
Like Dolmens
In honor of National Poetry Month – and in honor of my father, who told me to read this poem, here is: Like Dolmens Round My Childhood, The Old People by John Montague Like dolmens round my childhood, the old … Continue reading