The aim of aimlessness
This made me think - surrendering to aimlessness to write poetry (and other things? A good letter? A story?). Perhaps...
Fate goes as ever fate must
This translation by Seamus Heaney rings like a proverb on the immutability of fate. Elsewhere, he brings it up close and...
Past into future will go
I like this concept of an inheritance as something solidly rooted in the past, but ‘willable forward again and again...
Be sweet, be useful, and even be true
It seems Horace wanted to fulfill this injunction, intending his poems to be ‘helpers of humanity’.
Perhaps another reason his...
To see at a distance
Thoreau has many striking things to say about poets, and even if I can't seize on them as definitive or...
Poetry as connector
Since good poetry (good writing, for that matter) transcends time, I liked this phrase of Molly Peacock, a Canadian poet,...
The piling up of beauty
Clive James' spent decades working on his splendid translation of Dante, sometimes in 'back burner' mode, other times full on. ...
Of words, wording and eternity
Part of my blogophyte journey has been to learn about some of the technical workings of the online world, among...
To charm, to change …
Odysseus is a tricky hero, part noble, upstanding and brave, part slippery, trickery, too-clever-by-half. He is a compelling orator, and...
Being never wholly so
This line from a poem concerns being and being written or heard about. If it isn't written (and presumably, read)...
Freedom gained?
What is freedom? Options? Room for manoeuvre? Time? Carte blanche and blank cheques? Absence of censorship? Self-mastery? Purpose?
Recently I’ve...
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