Tag Archives: Marianne Moore

“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 language and influence had that strong a pull. … Continue reading

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“The purpose of an artist, whatever it is, is to take the life, whatever he sees, and to raise it up to an elevated position where it has dignity.” — William Carlos Williams

“No ideas but in things.” – from “Paterson”, by William Carlos Williams The first poems I read of William Carlos Williams, in high school English class, were the red wheelbarrow one and the one about the plums. I imagine that’s … Continue reading

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“The rhythm is jazz.” — Hart Crane

“What I want to get is … an ‘interior’ form, a form that is so thorough and intense as to dye the words themselves with a pecularity of meaning, slightly different maybe from the ordinary definition of them separate from … Continue reading

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“Too many poets delude themselves by thinking the mind is dangerous and must be left out. Well, the mind is dangerous, and must be left in.” — Robert Frost

“[The poem] begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life–not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects … Continue reading

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Happy Birthday, Wystan Hugh Auden: “The enlightenment driven away / The habit-forming pain”

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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“Since we do float on an unknown sea I think we should examine the other floating things that come our way very carefully.” — poet Elizabeth Bishop

“All the intellectuals were communist except me. I’m always very perverse so I went in for T.S. Eliot and Anglo-Catholicism.”– Elizabeth Bishop Elizabeth Bishop, born on this day, is one of my favorite poets. She didn’t write all that many … Continue reading

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“The people must grant a hearing to the best poets they have, else they will never have better.” — Harriet Monroe

“I started in early with Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, with Dickens and Thackeray; and always the book-lined library gave me a friendly assurance of companionship with lively and interesting people, gave me friends of the spirit to ease my loneliness.” – … Continue reading

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“Omissions are not accidents.” — poet Marianne Moore

“I disliked the term “poetry” for any but Chaucer’s or Shakespeare’s or Dante’s.” — Marianne Moore T.S. Eliot felt Moore’s poetry was probably the “most durable” of all the greats writing at the time. Sadly, I have no idea how … Continue reading

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For International Women’s Day: Ladies I Love

These women inspire, entertain, challenge, comfort, provoke, or were “there” in my formative years as an inspiration. The list is huge. Below the jump.

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It’s Ezra Pound’s Birthday: “Do not retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose.”

And give up verse, my boy, There’s nothing in it. — Ezra Pound I grew up hearing stories of Ezra Pound. Not the stories of his fascism or his relaxing time in a cage in Italy, or being indicted for … Continue reading

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