From Seamus Heaney “Here is the great paradox of poetry and of the imaginative arts in general. Faced with the brutality of the historical onslaught, they are practically useless. Yet they verify our singularity. they strike and stake out the ore of self which lies at the base of every individuated life. In one senseContinueContinue reading “From Seamus Heaney”
Category Archives: literature
Taking time with Szymborska
One of the pleasures of disconnecting, if only for a few months, from the real world, and from its rush and press, the deadlines and overloads, its grinding work and gasping wishes, is to take the time to enjoy poetry again, both as a writer and a reader. The other night, with no obligations attachedContinueContinue reading “Taking time with Szymborska”
Inspirations from Roberto Calasso
I aspire to write history not like a dry professor, but more like the shimmering mysteries of the past evoked by writers like W.G. Sebald or the sometimes ponderous but often astonishing Roberto Calasso. “There is no essential reason for history to be distinguished from literature,” he writes in the most enigmatic of histories ofContinueContinue reading “Inspirations from Roberto Calasso”
Wallace Stevens’ mind of winter
Wallace Stevens is a poet for lovers of beauty among ruins. For those of us in the second half of life he is of unique importance: diligent insurance executive, sometimes benighted husband, and much deferred, superbly deferred poet. He first read his poetry aloud to an audience, with some awkwardness in 1938 at the ageContinueContinue reading “Wallace Stevens’ mind of winter”
The burning archive
The Burning Archive is the title of my work in progress collection of poetry. It is inspired by Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus, a painting of 1920, a world in which political, cultural and social orders were in collapse. The painting was inscribed by Walter Benjamin into Gerhard Scholem’s apocalyptic visions, and became the most enduring of his ThesesContinueContinue reading “The burning archive”