by beatriceotto | Nov 9, 2018 | poetry mojo, writing & writers
Yes, you can find a thousand things more urgent than writing, or at least more insistent. Writing for this and other websites takes precedence over a series of children’s stories I have begun. Blogs have a rhythm or schedule, books are open-ended. I find time...
by beatriceotto | Nov 9, 2018 | poetry mojo, writing & writers
This line from a poem concerns being and being written or heard about. If it isn’t written (and presumably, read) or told (and presumably, heard), it cannot fully be. I don’t believe I fully agree but it’s something to think about. ‘… what is...
by beatriceotto | Nov 2, 2018 | poetry mojo, think ink
Hand-written notes and journals have a magic to them. Durrell is a favourite poet and his house in Greece was as close to the coast as you can be without getting your feet wet. Were these spatterings the voice of the sea telling him when he had a fine turn of phrase,...
by beatriceotto | Sep 14, 2018 | poetry mojo, writing & writers
Keats was a bold player, keeping his eye determinedly focussed on achieving enduring greatness, not on the fads and fashions of the critical present. His letters reveal his willingness to fly in the face of, and transcend, the vagaries of reviewers. Here he uses a...
by beatriceotto | Sep 14, 2018 | poetry mojo
The durability of things and of cultures intrigues me; and particularly when those artefacts are themselves physically fragile or insubstantial. Here, Adam Nicolson demonstrates that durability need not be carved in stone; in many cases it is simply continuing...
by beatriceotto | Sep 7, 2018 | poetry mojo
Patrick Leigh Fermor wore his vast learning lightly, as real scholars often do. Here he more than meets his match – and sees through his own presumption – when an old man instantly discerns the metre of a local dirge. Long live lay learning! ‘A...
by beatriceotto | Aug 31, 2018 | poetry mojo, writing & writers
My earliest impressions of Keats were as a languishing poetic type, not a man of action. Now, after getting to know him through his letters (among the best I have read), he comes across as a vital, life-loving and out-stepping person, even though destroyed by illness...
by beatriceotto | Aug 3, 2018 | poetry mojo, writing & writers
This is one of the longest and most entertaining chapters in Machado de Assis’ novel Don Casmurro, a fictional memoir of the eponymous narrator. Many of the other chapters are shorter than a sonnet, but I liked this one, describing the sonnet he almost wrote,...
by beatriceotto | Aug 2, 2018 | a quote to note, poetry mojo
Homer is awash with examples of great hospitality and generosity between hosts and guests, even uninvited ones washing up on the beach. Here is a pithy proverb summing up the responsibility of each. Logue’s magnificent rendition of several books of the...
