poetry mojo, writing & writers
In fact, a prayer for any writer. Having just read John Drury’s marvelous appreciation of George Herbert’s life and his vivifying skills of poetry, I am more conscious than usual of the need for such fortifying. Drury’s Music at Midnight is, among...
poetry mojo, writing & writers
How do you learn to write? My belief is that if fine writing comes from you, mostly it is due to fine reading, even if (or particularly when?) you forget the detail of what you have read but keep the imprint.Here Dante acknowledges Virgil not only as his travel and...
a quote to note, poetry mojo
In an age where you are expected to shout, tweet, bluster and generally blather about everything you do, it is heartening to read Virgil’s pithy injunction that reasonable requests should be responded to by silent action. “The answer to a fairRequest...
metaphors, poetry mojo, triologisms
One of the many stretch metaphors used by Homer. When you see a comma followed by ‘as …’ it can be a signal to take a good intake of breath to carry you through to the end of the image. Here it is feisty bees and quick-bending wasps who convey the...
metaphors, poetry mojo, triologisms
Flowing like the sweet-running river it evokes, a meandering metaphor for Hector’s strength and movement, likened to a thoroughbred horse breaking free and seeking out its remembered watering spots and pastures. Other riverine triologisms include:...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
