Category Archives: Reading

Guy N. Pocock on the function(s) of poetry (1920)

Posted on March 10, 2018 by

Like Prufrock never happened… …poets write [poetry] because they have a keener imaginative insight into the real significance of things than most men; and besides they are able to use words in such wonderful fashion as to conjure up for … Continue reading →

Posted in Poetry's function, Reading | Tagged , , ,

James Wright on the Olympian syndicate

Posted on February 7, 2017 by

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 →

Posted in Reading | Tagged , , ,

Joseph Harrison on writing and Penelope

Posted on December 3, 2016 by

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 →

Posted in Reading | Tagged , , , , , ,

W. H. Auden on the function of poetry (1938)

Posted on December 1, 2016 by

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 , , , , ,

Leigh Hunt on reading poetry while eating (1821)

Posted on November 26, 2016 by

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 →

Posted in Reading | Tagged , , , ,

Nicholas Lezard on the ghost stories of EF Benson (Guardian)

Posted on October 18, 2016 by

I wonder what it is that made the era so propitious for the production of this kind of story. (HG Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle were at it, too, among countless others.) One could propose a kind of morphic resonance, … Continue reading →

Posted in Reading | Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Robert Lowell and confessional poetry (Lost Puritan)

Posted on September 29, 2016 by

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 →

Posted in Reading | Tagged , , ,