As mentioned in the section “literary nationalism” (‘the river ran red: literary wars’), the so-called ‘poetry wars’ of the early ’90s left me in a state of considerable expasperation for many reasons, one of which was the charge that to write in rhyme and meter was to place oneself in a relationship of indentured servitude [...]
Archive for the ‘Victorians’ Category
. 8. Along the stripling Thames: in search of the Scholar Gipsy
Posted in Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Gary Snyder, gypsies, Marian Hollinger, Matthew Arnold, rhyme, tarot, Victorians, women problems, tagged gypsies, Oxford, Scholar Gipsy, tarot, Thames River on May 22, 2008 | 1 Comment »
12. Submerged in the waters of Lethe
Posted in absinthe, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Art Institute of Chicago, beauty, Catherine, Dante, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Elizabeth Siddal, Emily Bronte, gothic, graveyards, Heathcliff, John Keats, Lethe, love lost, moor, oblivion, opiates, poppies, poverty, Pre-Raphaelites, shadows, symbolism, Victorians, Virginia DeCourcey, tagged graveyards, Heathcliff, symbolism, Virginia DeCourcy on May 18, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Sleep, dream, opiates, oblivion. Years in which I read Keats above all others, culminating finally in a visit to his home on the edge of Hampstead Heath. A life surrounded by dark colors, drawn curtains, bottles of cabernet and candlelight. Solitary hours in a moonlit garden, midnight excursions to graveyards, daylong pilgrimages to the Symbolist [...]









