by beatriceotto | Aug 30, 2018 | a quote to note
Having also tried various neat distinctions which inevitably crumble in the face of precise examples that don’t fit, I liked Thoreau’s conclusion that a ‘beautiful fact’ can’t easily be excluded from a notebook on poetry. For similar...
by beatriceotto | Jun 21, 2018 | a quote to note
Zeus here neatly rebuffs his daughter Athene’s requests. I like his suitably arch reaction, which puts all supplicants in their petty place, even gorgeous goddesses, allowing the god of gods to just hang out on Olympus undisturbed. ‘Child, I am God, Please do...
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 | 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
First, the unusual simile, I never thought of a lamb’s bleat as free or lawless. Then the idea that a true poetic sentence is free and lawless. I found several similar comments in Thoreau, and something about them gave me a sense of liberty. I was once...
by beatriceotto | Mar 16, 2017 | a quote to note
Humility comes through Keats’ letters, though he was also quietly conscious of having something the future would acclaim, even when subjected to scathing reviews (who remembers the reviewers now?). ‘I am three and twenty with little knowledge and middling...
by beatriceotto | Mar 16, 2017 | a quote to note
When Laurie Lee was starting out in life, and was far from being yet an ‘author’, he had some poems published. This was the appreciative reaction of his landlord. ‘Is it really you?’ he asked fastidiously. ‘I wasn’t aware you had such beautiful...
by beatriceotto | Nov 15, 2016 | triologisms
An odd image this. Gleaming helmets topped with bobbing plumes of beautiful birds can create mirages of battlefield glamour, building the height and perceived power of the warrior. But vultures feed off dead bodies and have a hungry, predatory look to them. You...
