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Tag Archives: poetry
“[My ambition is to] give something to our literature which will be our own.” — Walt Whitman
“I like to think that eventually he will shame us into becoming Americans again.” — Guy Davenport on Walt Whitman Whitman is the organizing principle behind my review of Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue. Bob Dylan quotes Whitman all the … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Algernon Charles Swinburne, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Camille Paglia, Elizabeth Bishop, Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, Frank O'Hara, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Harold Bloom, Hart Crane, James Baldwin, Longfellow, Michael Schmidt, Oscar Wilde, poetry, Thoreau, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams
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“If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET.” — poet Countee Cullen
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing! — Countee Cullen It’s his birthday today. Cullen is often compared to Langston Hughes (my post on Hughes here), seems a little unfair, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged H.L. Mencken, Harlem Renaissance, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Melvin B. Tolson, poetry
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“When I aim at praise, they say I bite.” — Alexander Pope
How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! -— Alexander Pope, from “Eloisa to Abelard” Alexander Pope was born on this day in 1688. He was so huge … Continue reading
Posted in On This Day, writers
Tagged Alexander Pope, Allen Ginsberg, Camille Paglia, Christopher Smart, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Eminem, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, H.L. Mencken, Jonathan Swift, Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, poetry, T.S. Eliot, Thomas Jefferson, William Blake, William Wordsworth
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“My dear child, I’m sure we shall be allowed to laugh in Heaven!” — Edward Lear
Edward Lear (the “father of nonsense”) was born on this day in 1812 in London. I could recite from memory a lot of his stuff when I was pretty close to the age I was in the “candid” photo above. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Edward Lear, England, George Orwell, poetry
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“I know that for myself, what is deeper than I understand is often the most pertinent to me and the most lasting.” — Lorine Niedecker
It’s her birthday today. I had not heard of Lorine Niedecker, until 2010, when I took the Norton Anthology out to Block Island with me, in the hopes it would help me get back to reading again. It worked. And … Continue reading
“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
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“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
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Poet. Novelist. Editor. Teacher. Activist. Happy Birthday, Jessie Redmon Fauset
“Better the wound forever seeking balm Than this gray calm!” –Jessie Redmon Fauset, from “Dead Fires” Jessie Redmon Fauset was a “forgotten writer” for many years, following her heyday in the 20s and 30s, until her work was resurrected by … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Anne Spencer, Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, poetry
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When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, / Hath put a spirit of youth in everything …
Today is (supposedly, roughly) the birthday of William Shakespeare. April 23, 1564. (Title of the post from Sonnet 98.) One of the things I think about when I think about Shakespeare, is my late great teacher Doug Moston, who died … Continue reading
Posted in On This Day, Theatre, writers
Tagged Ben Jonson, Ford Madox Ford, George Bernard Shaw, Michael Schmidt, poetry, Shakespeare, W.H. Auden
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