This is very different stuff than the angst of later confessional poets such as Lowell and Plath, whose despair is essentially personal, rooted in disappointment and disillusionment. Kees, by comparison, proposes that this is simply how it is, and does so with enough coolness and elegance that it comes as no surprise that Wallace Stevens wrote to Kees ordering a volume of a limited edition of his verse.

This article is filed under After Image, Art, Poetry.

The practice of blessing mass entertainment with the bard’s prose confers a kind of loftiness upon it, or at least that must be the idea. A quick glance indicates that Shakespeare has provided titles for an alarming number of Star Trek episodes, just for starters. This week, lend your ears to Brett Harrison Davinger and me (Dan Fields) as we look at some of our favorite films to borrow a title from the works of Shakespeare.

This article is filed under Best Movies, Horror, Literary Themes, Movies, Mystery, Poetry, Satire, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Television, The Fourth Wall, Theatre, Thrillers, Writers.

Except for a (thankfully) brief, unscientific use of Google metrics, Orr beautifully shares instances of why one might fall in love with poetry. He recounts his life-changing discovery of the poet Philip Larkin, and his experience of helping his father, a stroke victim, improve his speech through readings of Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussycat.”

This article is filed under Books, Literary Themes, Non-Fiction Reviews, Poetry.

A movie can do a lot of things to an audience. It may move them, amuse them, disgust them, terrify them, or in all too many cases bore them. One thing only a handful of films can do is inspire wonder. Every once in a while, a winning combination of writer, director, designers, composers and cast meet in perfect harmony. Such, I feel, is the case of Marcel Carné’s 1945 epic romance, Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise).

This article is filed under Art, Best Movies, Classics, France, Humor, Literary Themes, Movies, Music, Poetry, The Fourth Wall, Theatre.

Blest be anyone who, in this age of meretricious materialism, nascent narcissism, and hapless hedonism, returns us to poetry, to the joy of language for its own sake, for its distilled passion, and for its summons to discipline, in both writer and reader.

This article is filed under Literary Themes, Non-Fiction Reviews, Poetry.

“American culture is swamped with dizzying media images, which have become a primary form of communication. Language has become increasingly debased. It proliferates on the Web but in rushed, banal form. Newspapers and magazines no longer have a concern for style of expression.”

This article is filed under Non-Fiction Reviews, Poetry.

We lived heretofore in the multitude of villages scattered world-wide amongst the ruins of the Tower of Babel. Civilization’s tapestry, its complicated patterns interwoven from multitudes of poets and poetries, once covered their walls and held our attention. Will there come to be in the global village but one faceless, boring bard who speaks with the reduced, infinitely reductive voice the simplified and platitudinous messages of the Media?

This article is filed under Literary Themes, Non-Fiction Reviews, Poetry.

Simplicity requires oneness. If you want to be someone, you are two and you are not simple. If you want to be simple, you are also two and you are not simple.

This article is filed under Literary Themes, Non-Fiction Reviews, Poetry, Writers.

The time between New Year’s 1956 and April 1958 was a period of general uncertainty and renewed spiritual doubt for Neal Cassady. He remained haunted by Natalie’s death.

This article is filed under Biography, Non-Fiction Reviews, Poetry, Writers.

Goethe and Tagore, separated by time and contexts, but joined in their great felicity over the literary idiom, show similar quests in the understanding of the sciences. It is alluring to jump to the conclusion of a phony and fashionable unity; that science and arts are the same after all; and literature, music, mathematics, and the physical sciences are all manifestations of the common muse.

This article is filed under Biography, India, Mathematics, Non-Fiction Reviews, Poetry, Science, Writers.

I knew it occurred every Autumn. And every Autumn I intended to go. And after many trials and as many errors, I finally made it one August. It was the festival of the earth.

This article is filed under Biography, Environment, India, Literary Themes, Non-Fiction Reviews, Poetry, Writers.