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 | Jul 27, 2018 | poetry mojo, writing & writers
This made me laugh, Keats’ pithy analysis of the source of English literary brilliance. There are several references in his letters to his belief that he will be recognised as one of the great poets of his country, already star-studded with great poets, but not...
by beatriceotto | Jul 13, 2018 | poetry mojo, writing & writers, you got mail
Here are Keats’ own aspirations for his letter-writing. Whether he found interesting matter or just made matter interesting, his letters reveal a brilliantly alert, alive, playful, lovable human being. Andrew Motion’s splendid biography also comments on...
by beatriceotto | Jun 8, 2018 | poetry mojo, readers & reading
Here Christopher Logue highlights the sheer vital durability of Homer and the magnitude of such sustainability, kept alive through a hard core of ‘Unprofessional Ancient Greek Readers’. I don’t know if I qualify, since the UAGR could refer only to...
by beatriceotto | Mar 12, 2018 | language & translation, metaphors, poetry mojo
A fine and subtle way to depict a look which appears to express more than the person looking is capable of feeling. And I’ve always been struck when I come across commonplace proverbs and phrases in their original setting, and see how readily they are used by...
by beatriceotto | Feb 16, 2018 | poetry mojo
Poetry is one of the strongest channels for expressing pain, and I liked the use of the word ‘pressed’. It implies a wine-making process, as if you emptied vat loads of painful must and then pressed out a small quantity of distilled language to be...
by beatriceotto | Nov 22, 2017 | poetry mojo, writing & writers
More than just the writing of poetry, isn’t writing in general often ‘a voice answering a voice’? This touching quotation comes towards the end of Orlando and the end of Orlando’s long endeavours to complete her poem. It is the first and last...
by beatriceotto | Nov 22, 2017 | poetry mojo, writing & writers
This pithy summary of the difference between prose and poetry is as much as Orlando gleans from the convoluted accounts of a poet to whom he has opened his home, larder, wine cellar, purse and poetic aspirations, in the hope of some helpful guidance. Not forthcoming....
by beatriceotto | Jul 21, 2017 | poetry mojo, writing & writers
Thoreau has many striking things to say about poets, and even if I can’t seize on them as definitive or universal in their application, they make me think. This one is a little clunky in its expression, as if he is thinking out loud, but I like the idea of the...
