Futility worth reading about
I like the idea that something about futility is written so splendidly that it’s worth reading before you give up...
Learning to write
How do you learn to write? My belief is that if fine writing comes from you, mostly it is due to...
A poet on poetry
A surprising combination of qualities to look for in fine poetry (and other writing). Hard to think of poetry which...
Of words, wording and eternity
Part of my blogophyte journey has been to learn about some of the technical workings of the online world, among...
Heroic journals
All laud to Labaume, going to such heroic lengths to write his journal. I will have to introduce this makeshift...
In praise of idiosyncratic spelling
Those were the days, when you spelled, or spelt, or spellt, a word as you saw fit. Then the spelling...
Of abundant overflow
What causes creativity to spring forth? I like Seamus Heaney's idea that it is not so much reactive as a...
Pruning exuberance, corroding hope
Borges uses two incisive metaphors to create the effect of some Irish writing on English letters.
'(Irish writers) … made...
Something more pressing
Yes, you can find a thousand things more urgent than writing, or at least more insistent. Writing for this...
Slang-dotted prose
A lively description of Simon Winder's zestful style which demonstrates that prose needn't be plodding just because it's about a...
On illusory madness
A fine description of Mervyn Peake's balance between bounding imagination and taut writing, rounded off with a vintage metaphor.
...
A twig for a pen
Paper was forbidden, so this boy’s brother taught him to write with twigs on the sand, and later he managed...
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