A poet’s prayer
In fact, a prayer for any writer. Having just read John Drury's marvelous appreciation of George Herbert's life and his...
China through Chinese literature
Glad to highlight a new audiobook company dedicated to bringing modern Chinese fiction to a wider audience through new and...
Learning to write
How do you learn to write? My belief is that if fine writing comes from you, mostly it is due to...
The sin of fence-sitting
Clearly, sitting on the fence, hedging your bets, watching which way the wind blows, is a sin which leads to...
Scum-skinned tide
Something alarmingly contemporary about this polluted surface in Dante's Inferno, especially when he discerns, through the miasma, dead souls fleeing.
...
Translation as hammering
Heaney conveys in a simple image the difficulty of translating poetry. Elsewhere, he refers to his progress as being ‘scriptorium...
Thunderbolts are go (I)
The gods learn the price of rebellion against the supreme one. Hughes' re-telling of Ovid's tales has some spectacular thunderbolt...
Speed meets beauty
One of the most vivid and original similes I have come across is Ted Hughes' description of the two dazzling...
Beware rash judgement
Dante is cautioned to beware those who pass speedy judgement - 'Anyone and his wife' who think in witnessing a...
Too much information
Dante anticipated the age in which we are drowned in facts, fake and otherwise. Note his observation of our being...
As dogs in summer
Desperate people, condemned to eternal infernal cruelties, are likened to dogs failing to fight off the tiny tormenting assaults of...
The piling up of beauty
Clive James' spent decades working on his splendid translation of Dante, sometimes in 'back burner' mode, other times full on. ...
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