One day I walked into a bookshop, asked for the poetry section and pulled out a book because I liked the colour of it or its title, Open Closed Open. I don't remember. On the back cover was a sentence by Octavio Paz, one of my favourite poets, which said "Once one has read (Amichai's)... Continue Reading →
Smiles in my pockets
Very often I find stuff in my pockets. Usually it's receipts or old tickets. Sometimes I extract a crumpled piece of paper I can no longer decipher but which I know is a now unidentifiable idea which I tried to jot down while tripping over a dog or avoiding a motorcycle. There are pockets in... Continue Reading →
The Heart of Chinese Poetry
I remember clearly the first time I managed to understand a poem in classical Chinese. It was like seeing someone perform an unexpected conjuring trick, shaking out a piece of rope and then tossing it up into the air to make it stand stiffly like a stick . Then back again. There was certainly some... Continue Reading →
More Ko Un
Today I showed some poems by the Korean poet Ko Un to a friend, who agreed that he is a genius. Therefore I am resuming my personal campaign to get him the Nobel Prize for Literature. If things keep up I estimate that I should be able to get this done around the year 2520.... Continue Reading →
Rhyme’s Reason – The Repetitions Build the Villanelle- Villanelles by Auden and Bishop
John Hollander - Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse (Yale Nota Bene) I love poetry but I have never found it easy to get excited about spondees, trochees and anapests. It would probably be of great benefit to me if I could, however there is something about books that discuss metre and prosody that... Continue Reading →
Billy Collins Reading Three Poems Brought to Completion
Billy Collins reading three poems and making people laugh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Agj5VUiNZA January in Paris ‘A poem is never finished, only abandoned’ Paul Valery That winter I had nothing to do but tend the kettle in my shuttered room on the top floor of a pensione near a cemetery, but I would sometimes descend the stairs, unlock... Continue Reading →
Ounce Dice Trice
For some time now New York Review Books has been re-publishing books which have been out of print for a while. This seems to me to be an excellent idea. In fact, it might be good to have a one week moratorium on new books once a year, call it Reprint Week, and dedicate it solely to old books which have been... Continue Reading →
Leopardi’s Infinity
Giacomo Leopardi is generally described as the greatest Italian lyric poet but you don't really need to know anything about him to appreciate his poem L'Infinito. I see the title often translated as The Infinite, but I am not sure that means anything in English, so I am going to opt for Infinity. Here then... Continue Reading →
Eyes in the City – Kurt Tucholsky
In Edgar Reitz's Second Heimat there is a scene where one of the main characters, Clarissa (Salome Kammer), is singing a song at the piano inside a villa which is full of people milling around. I kept on going back to the scene to watch it again and finally found that the text was a... Continue Reading →
Two glimpses of Icarus
This painting is Brueghel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. You will probably need to click on the picture to enlarge it in order to see Icarus clearly. If you were visiting the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels in a bit of a hurry and didn't know the painting's title, you might even... Continue Reading →