Take a lucky dip in this refreshing pool of posts, randomly selected like literary Russian roulette (but more fun and much safer). Or filter by category to take a deeper dive into specific themes. Enjoy!
On growing up
An interesting definition of growing up - losing your illusions. But then humanly allowing the possibility that you will acquire...
Spring-time welcome
My heart also expands at the spring-time welcome of where I live and where I visit. Here, the detail of...
As slim and blithe as…
Here's Orlando fast forwarding to imagine how his blithe, slim darling might appear at 40. I liked 'slim as a...
A rotting bog of security
In Kazantzakis' lively version of Christ's life, Jesus' mother wishes only that his spiritual struggles don't get in the way...
Straight as an avenue of poplars
When was the last time you received - or wrote - an 18 page letter? I think I have managed...
Do what a hero must
Naturally, any would-be hero or heroine needs to set sail, or how are they to prove their worth? Clive James,...
A plea for pity – I
A pithy plea for pity in a rocky, raging universe. See Keats' equally eloquent expression of the need for...
Tender-coloured sky
Elizabeth Gaskell was a Victorian novelist and a friend of Charlotte Bronte, whose biography she wrote. I see her as...
Barnacle-encrusted boulders
The clingon power of the barnacle is astonishing, as anyone who ever tried to prise them off the rocks in...
Where gannets swoop and rise
In the countdown to a major gift-giving season, I liked this ancient reference to a human presents. May you give and...
Aim high, 17th century style
George Herbert, one of England's greatest poets, as well as being a priest and the Orator of Cambridge University (something...
Of guardian trees
A beautiful way to convey the kind, protective presence of someone quietly keeping an eye on the well-being of another. ...
Appreciation is a better mode for the understanding of achievement than are all the analytical kinds of accounting for the emergence of exceptional individuals. Appreciation may judge, but always with gratitude, and frequently with awe and wonder.
By ‘appreciation’ I mean something more than ‘adequate esteem’. Need also enters into it, in the particular sense of turning to the genius of others in order to redress a lack in oneself, or finding in genius a stimulus to one’s own powers, whatever these may emerge as being.
Source: Harold Bloom, Genius (London: Fourth Estate, 2002), p. 5
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