Scum-skinned tide
Something alarmingly contemporary about this polluted surface in Dante's Inferno, especially when he discerns, through the miasma, dead souls fleeing.
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Mind the (heart-shaped) gap
Ah, heart-shaped gaps! How many people walk around with these, whether in their personal, professional, cultural or spiritual life? May...
As free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat
First, the unusual simile, I never thought of a lamb's bleat as free or lawless. Then the idea that a...
Freedom gained?
What is freedom? Options? Room for manoeuvre? Time? Carte blanche and blank cheques? Absence of censorship? Self-mastery? Purpose?
Recently I’ve...
Summary impatience
I liked this sharp injunction to Dante to hurry up and spit it out. You can imagine an impatient parent...
Light-stream interplay
The dancing dust of a sunbeam also glimmering as a mirror hall for fireflies. What a bright image.
Of sisters dissimilar
Dante meets the two sisters in Purgatory, and Leah describes, with Dantesque pithiness, the difference between them.
For other quotations...
Mercury as maestro
I love this depiction of Mercury as a gold-baton waving maestro easing our passage. May he play you a world-embracing symphony.
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Instinct with poetry
A fine and subtle way to depict a look which appears to express more than the person looking is capable...
Poems for my family 006 – Cavafy
This poem has been in my mental saddlebags for about a quarter of a century. I can't remember how I...
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,...
Of abundant overflow
What causes creativity to spring forth? I like Seamus Heaney's idea that it is not so much reactive as a...
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