Categories
Archives
-
-
-
Recent Posts
- “I didn’t think then, and I still don’t, that I was actually sick.” — Frances Farmer
- “I think I’m a character actress in a leading lady’s body, but the industry doesn’t really see me that way.” — Sanaa Lathan
- “I never said, ‘I want to be alone.’ I only said, ‘I want to be left alone.’ There is all the difference.” — Greta Garbo
- It’s the birthday of Irish poet Mícheál Ó hAirtnéide (Michael Hartnett)
- “I was a pretty good imitator of Roy Acuff, but then I found out they already had a Roy Acuff, so I started singin’ like myself.” — Hank Williams
- “I’ve been very lucky, considering what I look like and what I do.” — James Gandolfini
- “The purpose of an artist, whatever it is, is to take the life, whatever he sees, and to raise it up to an elevated position where it has dignity.” — William Carlos Williams
- “I swear my next project is going to be something really simple and focused and minimal.” — Baz Luhrmann
- Substack: some thoughts on “voice” and other things
- “When you lose everything, and I mean everything, you sit there in this empty room in the dark, and the only person who can get you out is you.” — Mickey Rourke
Recent Comments
- Mike Molloy on “The thing I really wanna say is—and really, really mean is that real things last. Any way you look at it. Real things last.” — Dale Hawkins
- Bill Wolfe on “The thing I really wanna say is—and really, really mean is that real things last. Any way you look at it. Real things last.” — Dale Hawkins
- sheila on “The thing I really wanna say is—and really, really mean is that real things last. Any way you look at it. Real things last.” — Dale Hawkins
- Bill Wolfe on “The thing I really wanna say is—and really, really mean is that real things last. Any way you look at it. Real things last.” — Dale Hawkins
- sheila on August 2024 Viewing Diary
- Stevie on August 2024 Viewing Diary
- sheila on August 2024 Viewing Diary
- sheila on Review: My First Film (2024)
- mutecypher on August 2024 Viewing Diary
- mutecypher on Review: My First Film (2024)
- sheila on August 2024 Viewing Diary
- Mike Molloy on August 2024 Viewing Diary
- sheila on August 2024 Viewing Diary
- Barb on August 2024 Viewing Diary
- sheila on Review: My First Film (2024)
- sheila on Finding Elvis Shakespeare in Edinburgh
- Todd Restler on Finding Elvis Shakespeare in Edinburgh
- sheila on August 2024 Viewing Diary
- sheila on August 2024 Viewing Diary
- sheila on August 2024 Viewing Diary
-
Tag Archives: Michael Schmidt
“The purpose of an artist, whatever it is, is to take the life, whatever he sees, and to raise it up to an elevated position where it has dignity.” — William Carlos Williams
“No ideas but in things.” – from “Paterson”, by William Carlos Williams The first poems I read of William Carlos Williams, in high school English class, were the red wheelbarrow one and the one about the plums. I imagine that’s … Continue reading
“Poetry in my opinion must be honest before anything else and I refuse to be ‘objective’ or clear-cut at the cost of honesty.” — Irish poet Louis MacNeice
“Self-assertion more often than not is vulgar, but a live and vulgar dog who keeps on barking is better than a dead lion, however dignified.” — Louis MacNeice Born in Belfast on this day in 1907, Louis MacNeice went to … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Belfast, Elizabeth Bishop, Hugh MacDiarmid, Ireland, Irish poetry, Louis MacNeice, Michael Schmidt, poetry, W.H. Auden
Leave a comment
“Writing. Love is writing.” — poet H.D., HERmione
“Words were her plague and words were her redemption.” — H.D. HERmione It’s H.D.’s birthday today. First up: I wrote a gigantic piece about H.D.’s film criticism for Film Comment. Turns out, it was the final piece I wrote for … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, Ezra Pound, H.D., Harold Bloom, Harriet Monroe, Michael Schmidt, poetry, William Carlos Williams
21 Comments
“I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty… but I am too busy thinking about myself.” — poet Edith Sitwell
Born on this day. I don’t remember Sitwell being “read” in my poetry class in college, and I don’t remember her being covered in my English or Humanities classes in high school. She doesn’t seem to be one of the … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Edith Sitwell, England, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Schmidt, poetry
Leave a comment
“One day I hope I can write happier poems, but most of the things I think about aren’t very cheerful.” — poet Philip Larkin
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, one doesn’t STUDY poets! You READ them and think, That’s marvelous, how is it done, could I do it? and that’s how you learn. At the end of it you can’t say, That’s Yeats, that’s Auden, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Christopher Hitchens, Elizabeth Bishop, England, Michael Schmidt, Philip Larkin, poetry
9 Comments
“Tennyson’s rank is too well fixed and we love him too much.” — Oscar Wilde
He was not only a minor Virgil, he is also with Virgil as Dante saw him, a Virgil among the Shades, the saddest of all English poets. – T.S. Eliot It’s Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s birthday, born on August 6, 1809. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce, On This Day, writers
Tagged A.S. Byatt, Camille Paglia, Dorothy Parker, Ellen Terry, Emerson, England, Ezra Pound, George Orwell, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Harold Bloom, Ireland, Jeanette Winterson, L.M. Montgomery, Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Michael Schmidt, Oscar Wilde, Philip Larkin, poetry, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, T.S. Eliot, Thomas Hardy, W.H. Auden
9 Comments
“Poets, the best of them, are a very chameleonic race.” — Percy Bysshe Shelley
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, Dorothy Parker, England, Ernest Hemingway, Gerard Manley Hopkins, H.L. Mencken, Harold Bloom, John Keats, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Matthew Arnold, Michael Schmidt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, poetry, Robert Graves, T.S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, William Carlos Williams
14 Comments
“He who has never felt, momentarily, what madness is has but a mouthful of brains.” — Herman Melville
“Old nineteenth-century New England must have been fearful–in what other country would Thoreau, Melville, Whitman and Dickinson have been so overlooked?” — Robert Lowell, letter to Elizabeth Bishop, December 12, 1958 Herman Melville was born on this day in 1819. … Continue reading
Happy Birthday, Emily Brontë: “a solitude-loving raven, no gentle dove”
“My sister Emily loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; — out of a sullen hollow in a livid hill-side, her mind could make an Eden. She found in the … Continue reading
“I do not write for the public.” — poet Gerard Manley Hopkins
“I shall shortly have some sonnets to send you, five or more. Four of these came like inspirations unbidden and against my will. And in the life I lead now, which is one of a continually jaded and harassed mind, … Continue reading