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Tag Archives: Walt Whitman
“[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, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, Frank O'Hara, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Harold Bloom, Hart Crane, Henry David Thoreau, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Baldwin, Michael Schmidt, Oscar Wilde, poetry, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams
5 Comments
“What a writer asks of his reader is not so much to like as to listen.” — poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“He suffered excessive popularity; he has now suffered three quarters of a century of critical neglect.” – Michael Schmidt, Lives of the Poets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on this day in 1807, in Portland, Maine. He was the first … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Harold Bloom, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, L.M. Montgomery, Michael Schmidt, Paul Revere, poetry, Walt Whitman
6 Comments
“I do not write for the public.” — poet Gerard Manley Hopkins
“I shall shortly have some sonnets to send you, five or more. Four of these came like inspirations unbidden and against my will. And in the life I lead now, which is one of a continually jaded and harassed mind, … Continue reading
Walt Whitman: “This is What You Shall Do”
Walt Whitman, in his preface to Leaves of Grass: This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote … Continue reading
On the island
— An orgy of reading. Recuperative. I am feeling less shattered than I have. But I hesitate to even say such things. They anger the gods. — Mitchell, Meghan and Luisa came out for the day and it was seriously … Continue reading
Posted in Personal
Tagged Block Island, Clark Gable, family, friends, Hedy Lamarr, snapshots, Walt Whitman
4 Comments
The Books: “The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry” – Ezra Pound
“Do not retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose.” – Ezra Pound I grew up hearing stories of Ezra Pound, not just of his fascism and his time in a cage in Italy, or being … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce
Tagged Ezra Pound, Norton Anthology of Poetry, poetry, politics, Walt Whitman, war
7 Comments
The Books: “The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry” – D. H. Lawrence
Daily Book Excerpt: Poetry The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Volume 1: Modern Poetry, edited by Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O’Clair A real pioneer in his day, his stuff can seem rather silly now. I never … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged D.H. Lawrence, Norton Anthology of Poetry, poetry, Tennessee Williams, Walt Whitman
6 Comments
The Books: “The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry” – Walt Whitman
Daily Book Excerpt: Poetry The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Volume 1: Modern Poetry, edited by Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O’Clair A gorgeous two-volume edition of the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry is the … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Norton Anthology of Poetry, Oscar Wilde, poetry, Walt Whitman, war
12 Comments
November 14: “She has her prophet of it, Walt Whitman.”
Excerpted from Christopher Morley’s A Book of Days: Being a Briefcase packed for his own Pleasure: NOVEMBER 14, SATURDAY 1931 What America imports from Europe is useless to her. It is torn from its roots; and it is idle to … Continue reading