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On The Letters of Ted Hughes
I’ve been reading The Letters of Ted Hughes, which I’m finding impossible to put down. Like all letters written by people of genius, Hughes’s letters are a magical mix of erudition, crank notions, unguarded humor, soap opera, and authentic emotion. Hughes—who for my money stands as the greatest British poet of the last century—has more valuable things to say about the practice of poetry than anyone I’ve read. Herewith an example: “Up to the invention of Caxton’s press, and for most people long after, all reading was done aloud. Most people were incapable of reading silently.Read More
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Dangerous Considerations
The October 2007 issue of Poetry carries an observant, insightful bit of prose by the great Polish poet Adam Zagajewski entitled a “Dangerous Considerations: A Notebook.” He touches on Christmas in Krakow, Gottfried Benn, political disputes occasioned by Zbigniew Herbert’s death, Robert Musil and Thomas Mann (whose Magic Mountain Musil described as a “shark’s stomach”), Ted Hughes’s translations of Yehuda Amichai, a festschrift honoring the poetry of Stanislaw Baranczak, the essays of Gershom Scholem, Saint-John Perse (nom de plume of Aléxis Léger, who in the 1930s served as director of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs), E. M.Read More
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Blakean Visions in South London
“In honour of British poetry’s greatest visionary, I have been looking for angels in green and pleasant Peckham Rye.” >> Read the whole story.Read More
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Science’s Debt to William Blake
William Blake — “Tyger, Tyger”, “And did those feet…” and all that poetical stuff — was born 250 years ago tomorrow. He is remembered as a mythic, mystical and marvellous artist who penned the words to what has become England’s unofficial national anthem, “Jerusalem.” Less well known is the fact that Blake was an inventor who came up with a whole new technology…..Read More
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A Response to Christian Bök
Here’s a response to Christian Bök that I posted on the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet blog, for what it’s worth….Read More