Saturday, January 1, 2011
The poet, however, uses these two crude, primitive, archaic forms of thought [simile and metaphor] in the most uninhibited way, because his job is not to describe nature, but to show you a world completely absorbed and possessed by the human mind. So he produces what Baudelaire called a ‘suggestive magic including at the same […]
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
At fifty generations’ end (And such abysses time affords us all) I return to the further shore of a great river That the vikings’ dragons did not reach, To the harsh and arduous words That, with a mouth now turned to dust, I used in my Northumbrian, Mercian days Before I became a Haslam or […]
Monday, December 27, 2010
You say that I have no originality. Now mark this, prince—there is nothing so offensive to a man of our time and race than to be told that he is wanting in originality, that he is weak in character, has no particular talent, and is, in short, an ordinary person. You have not even done […]
Friday, December 24, 2010
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me— That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour […]
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
He could not make up his mind what he thought about it, and wished he had some friend who would tell him what to think. Actually it seemed to him wholly unsatisfactory, and yet very lovely, the only really beautiful picture in the world. What he would have liked at that moment would have been […]
La Tarde By Leopold Lugones. El cielo funde ya su piedra fina En el horno del sol, que tras del monte, Va esmaltando el metal del horizonte Con los más bellos cromos de su mina. Mordido de color en cada poro. Friega de oro el metal su pulimento, Y exorbita hasta el cénit un violento […]
Thursday, October 28, 2010
The bell, hung on the door by means of a curved ribbon of steel, was difficult to circumvent. It was hopelessly cracked; but of an evening, at the slightest provocation, it clattered behind the customer with impudent virulence. It clattered; and at that signal, through the dusty glass door behind the painted deal counter, Mr […]
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Let us look for a third tiger. This one will be a form in my dreams like all others, a system, an arrangement of human language, and not the flesh-and-bone tiger that, out of the reach of all mythologies, paces the earth. I know all this; yet something drives me to this ancient, perverse adventure, […]
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself […]
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Miles stopped beneath the overhang at the entrance to the tube station. He leaned against the wall, out of the wind, and a short distance from the throngs hurrying home from work. “Nobody knows because nobody knows, Robbie. You know, and I know, and the person who told me knows. And I guess if he—or […]