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Category Archives: Reading
Mary Ruefle on re-reading books
Rail: Before I turned on the tape for this interview, you were talking about your personal library and how you are at a stage in your life where your desire to re-read certain texts means you will not have time … Continue reading
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James Wright on the Olympian syndicate
In 1958, in July, [Wright] wrote me a letter (I’m sure similar letters went to others) in which he announced that he was through writing poems. […] The first issue of Robert Bly’s magazine, The Fifties, which he read at … Continue reading
Joseph Harrison on writing and Penelope
Penelope’s situation (in Homer, of course, it’s a death shroud she’s weaving) seems to me an interesting figure for the predicament of the writer or artist: making something, ripping it up, making something, ripping it up, all the while vaguely … Continue reading
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Tagged artist, Homer, Joseph Harrison, Penelope, poetry, tapestry, writer
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W. H. Auden on the function of poetry (1938)
The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient;I hope not. … Continue reading
Posted in Poetry's function, Reading
Tagged function of poetry, James Fenton, Plato, poetry, The New York Review of Books, W. H. Auden
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Leigh Hunt on reading poetry while eating (1821)
Every lover of books, scholar or not, who knows what it is to have his quarto open against a loaf at his tea … ought to be in possession of Mr. Coleridge’s poems, if it is only for ‘Christabel’, ‘Kubla … Continue reading
Robert Lowell and confessional poetry (Lost Puritan)
Soon Lowell walked in with several other dons, was introduced, and read. Afterwards, the don who’d introduced [Lowell] asked if there were any questions and, when no one raised their hand, [Michael] Waters asked Lowell about his confessional poems. At … Continue reading
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Tagged confessional poetry, Paul Mariani, Robert Lowell, Skunk Hour
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Susannah Herbert on not marketing poetry as a vitamin pill
The whole evangelical look-lovely-poems-are-good-for-you schtick assumes poetry is a precious endangered superfood, somewhere between a vitamin pill and a rare flower. Wrong. It should be ranked among life-forms that will survive nuclear holocaust: jellyfish, cockroaches, Millwall fans. Any effective campaign … Continue reading
Alan Moore on the appeal of writing comics (The New Yorker)
“The reason I liked comics was that nobody else did, because it was completely unsupervised…I was given a chance to sneak up on culture by some sort of back door.” — Alan Moore quoted in A Party in a Lunatic … Continue reading
Vahni Capildeo on the impossibility of herding readers (Poetry Spotlight)
Poetry Spotlight: I wonder if you could tell us a bit more about the process of reaching the final order of the book, and how important do you feel the ordering of poems is to how a reader experiences a … Continue reading
