Allen Ginsberg pops up in the Dylan documentary No Direction Home and gives this impromptu definition of poetry: Poetry is words that are empowered to make your hair stand on end, that you recognise instantly as being some form of subjective truth that has an objective reality to it, because somebody’s realised it. Then you […]
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William Wordsworth – The Prelude
Everyone knows the 1805 version of The Prelude is better than the 1850 version — Wordsworth could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he’d left it alone. Reading through my parallel text edition, my eyes strayed over to the right-hand page from time to time, but usually not for long — the older […]
W.H. Auden — ‘The Fall of Rome’
The causes of Auden’s move to the States have been debated ad nauseam, but here’s a minor side effect I’ve not seen anyone comment on: Caesar’s double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK On a pink official form. ‘The Fall of Rome’ Surely that’s an American accent in […]
Welcome (Back) to My Poetry Site
Well, it’s been a long break. Even longer than the break at Wishful Thinking. Partly it was down to simply being busy with other things — running my business, launching Lateral Action. And partly because I wasn’t happy having the poetry blog as an appendage to the Wishful Thinking site — as you can see, […]
Basho – Snow Business
Market people! I will sell you this hat with its snow-umbrella Via Basho