Sylvia and Marty (courtesy of the Alumnae Association of Smith College)
A lovely article about Sylvia Plath and her friend Marcia Brown Stern.
A Beautiful Friendship
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Tag Archives: Poets
Quote
“A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught.”-William Butler Yeats
The Dead Writers Round-Up: 16th-22nd September
- Anne Bradstreet died on 9/16/1672. “Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.”
- William Carlos Williams was born on 9/17/1883. “Life is valuable–when completed by the imagination. And then only.”
- Upton Sinclair was born on 9/20/1878. “All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.”
- Stevie Smith was born on 9/20/1902. “My Muse sits forlorn/She wishes she had not been born/She sits in the cold/No word she says is ever told.”
- Babette Deutsch was born on 9/22/1895. She graduated from Barnard College in 1917.
- Mary Roberts Rinehart died on 9/22/1958. “Men deceive themselves; they look back on the children who were once themselves, and attempt to reconstruct them. But they can no longer think like the child…”
[All images are in the Public Domain and are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]
Daily Diversion #45: Another World?
“There is another world, but it is in this one.”-William Butler Yeats
Clouds and myths and faerie stories?
Voices from the Grave #36: Denise Levertov Reading a Selection of Six Poems
Denise Levertov reading a selection of six poems.
Daily Diversion #43: Dying is an Art*
I took the day off from writing…
Dying is an art.
to play with skeletons and drink hard cider. See you tomorrow!
*”Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call.”-Sylvia Plath
A Year in Books/Day 209: Lives of the Poets
- Title: Lives of the Poets
- Author: Michael Schmidt
- Year Published: 1998 (A Phoenix Paperback)
- Year Purchased: 2004/2005
- Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
- About: Michael Schmidt takes approximately 1000 pages to cover more than 250 poets, briskly but rigorously dissecting their lives, influences, historical circumstances, and professional interconnections. Mapping out seven centuries of poetic genealogy is a gargantuan task, but Lives of the Poets is a surprisingly quick read, and as riveting as most of its subjects’ creations.
- Motivation: The title + poets + biographies=bliss. Surprised?
- Times Read: Cover-to-cover-1/Excerpts-Multiple
- Random Excerpt/Page 11: “Poems swim free of their age, but it’s hard to think of a single poem that swims entirely free of its medium, not just language but language used in the particular ways that are poetry. Even the most pathenogenetic-seeming poem has a pedigree. The poet may not know precisely a line’s or a stanza’s parents; indeed, may not be interested in finding out. Yet as readers of poetry we can come to know more about a poem than the poet does and know it more fully.”
- Happiness Scale: 8
[News] Putting a Face to the Poet: Is This Emily Dickinson?
According to experts, the answer is yes. It’s only the second known image of the poet, and the first showing her as an adult. ‘Tis a big deal, no? Still No New Pynchon Photo, but Here’s Emily Dickinson-The New York Times
Emily Dickinson gets a new look in recovered photograph-The Guardian
Daily Diversion #39: Beating Time Along the Edge of Thought*
When I cannot write, I look up. Craned neck, closed eyes. I swivel my creaking chair, and open them.
Meditative whir and whirl
Rendered in black-and-white, like rubbed-away ink on a faded page.
*“…beating time along the edge of thought.”-Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Daily Diversion #38: The Gladdest Thing Under the Sun*
Although hundreds of trees spread across the distant horizon like ink blots, the park adjacent to my flat is the only true green spot in this industrial neighborhood.
Pretty flowers and plants near the old workhouse wall that dissects my neighborhood.
I’m partial to the rust and dust and accumulated dirt, the graffiti and old buildings that litter the CW. The flowers are bright and perky, but they’ll die in service to the coming season. I like the good bones of the stone and brick structures, even if the edges are crumbly. They last, even if they are a bit shabby.
*I will be the gladdest thing/Under the sun!/I will touch a hundred flowers/And not pick one”-Edna St. Vincent Millay, Afternoon on a Hill
A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea. 