Category: t
-
From Harold Bloom’s The Anatomy of Influence (2011), p. 249: “Naming” (as in Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin) is closer to the real concerns of literature. I am moved here by my own splendid name of “Bloom,” particularly since my personal…
-
– – “I make notes on stray bits of paper which I then forget in the most unlikely places, in books, under ornaments and in my pockets and on the back of advertisements.” -James Joyce, in a letter to Claud…
-
Christmas decoration from Joan in 2009. What is your favourite ‘snowflakes’ moment in literature? Tell me. Mine is: London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the…
-
– In “Wondering what to give up for New Year? A few suggestions”, Charlie Brooker answers: A cupcake is just a muffin with clown puke topping. And once you’ve got through the clown puke there’s nothing but a fistful of…
-
Originally posted on March 14, 2009 1. If you wait long enough outside the Norman Castle, you’ll witness a long drowsy cloud snailing pass, transforming a white window into blue. 2. Look at us closely, we are all faceless readers, engulfed in books. Location: The…
-
–– “Winnipeg has 10 times the sleepwalking rate of any other city; city dwellers carry the keys to their previous addresses and those of past lovers so that when they wander to their old dreamy addresses, they can let themselves…
-
Originally posted on November 26, 2009. He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart. — Proverbs 11:29 A play at the Old Vic — is there a…
-
from Bernard Porter’s LRB article on Julia Lovell’s The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China: When it came to explaining their humiliations, the Chinese tended not to blame the invaders so much as themselves, or their Manchu…
-
[Click the above image to enlarge] UPDATE: 20 long-listed poems were announced on 4 February 2012. [Link] UPDATE: 12 short-listed poems were announced on 10 February 2012. [Link] UPDATE: 7 finalists were announced on 15 February 2012. [Link] Description: This…
-
– We are currently looking for prose (fiction and creative non-fiction) guest editors for 2012 and 2013 to read the submissions with us.– The guest editor position is open to all past and current contributors regardless of genres. We usually read around…
-
– Jerusalem, the Olivier- and Tony-award winning play written and directed by Jez Butterworth and Ian Rickson respectively, was arguably the best play I have seen in London: wickedly funny, timely and featuring a great performance by Mark Rylance as Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron,…
-
0 The quotes below are from Benjamin Markovits’s Childish Loves (2011). Some are from the ‘contemporary’ section and some from the 18thC and 19thC pastiche. Can you tell? (In my day maybe half the English department, and a quarter of the history…
-
– “Museum for Disappearing Buildings” as a storage vault for discarded architecture. The drawings describe a funereal chapel, where miniatures of “[e]ach disappearing building, even the most unprepossessing” are exhibited (Brodsky and Utkin 1984: n.p.). This project seems to call for a memorial for…
-
Rene Magritte’s “The False Mirror” William Henry Davies in his poem “Leisure” answers: Leisureby W.H. Davies WHAT is this life if, full of careWe have no time to stand and stare.No time to stand beneath the boughsAnd stare as long…
-
We are very happy to announce the winners for our first Fine Tea Competition 2011. First Prize £25.00Rumjhum Biswas discusses Sumana Roy’s “Love: Made in China”, published in “The China Issue” (July 2011). Second Prize £15.00Marybeth Rua-Larsen discusses Maysa Vang’s “Between…
-
“Nude, Green Leaves and Bust” (1932) -Picasso ––– The HugBy Thom Gunn It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined Half of the night with our old friend Who’d showed us in the end To a bed I reached…
-
According to Dictionary.com, there are nineteen words in the English language that have no perfect rhyme. The Nineteen Words angst n., a feeling of dread, anxiety, or anguish. bulb n. any round, enlarged part, esp. at the end of a…
-
–W.H. Mallock’s A Human Document (1892).The quotes below are from the shorter New York version. “how deep in the mud must a woman walk before a man considers her progress interesting?” p. iv “you excite expectations, though you have not yet…
-
Louis MacNeice in Autumn Journal (1939) answers: If it is something feasible, obtainable,…..Let us dream it now,And pray for a possible land…..Not of sleepwalkers, not of angry puppets,But where both hand and brain can understand…..The movements of our fellows;Where life is…
-
“Odysseus and Penelope” (1563) by Francesco Primaticcio From Homer’s Odyssey (Book 23): For built into the well-constructed bedstead is a great symbol which I made myselfwith no one else. A long-leaved olive bush was growing in the yard. It was…
-
Kim Newman in Anno Dracula (2011 [1991]) answers: The Chinese movie tradition of the hopping vampire (jiang shi or geung si) is one of the odder strains of vampirism. I saw Ricky Lau’s Mr Vampire (1985) in London’s Chinatown before the…
-
James Joyce in Ulysses (1922) answers: A softer beard: a softer brush if intentionally allowed to remain from shave to shave in its agglutinated lather: a softer skin if unexpectedly encountering female acquaintances in remote places at incustomary hours: quiet reflections…
-
Do you know other famous elephants? –––– The Elephant is Slow to Mate by D.H. Lawrence The elephant, the huge old beast, is slow to mate;he finds a female, they show no haste they waitfor the sympathy in their vast…
-
Morning after the Flood 1928 From Carol Jacobs’s “Playing Jane Campion’s Piano: Politically” (1994): A Catholic priest, a Protestant minister, and a rabbi were walking along the beach together when a great angel with diaphanous wings approached them. He announced an apocalypse near at hand, telling them of…
-
Jonathan Safran Foer wrote his first novel Everything is Illuminated (2002) when he was only 25.Some quotes from the book: 1. But first I am burdened to recite my good appearance. p. 3 2. … because unless I do not want…
-
– – ––The Woman…………………………..by Robert Creeley I have neverclearly given to youthe associationsyou have for me, you with suchdivided presence my dreamdoes not showyou. I do not dream. I have compoundedthese sensations, theaccumulation of the thingsleft me by you. Always…
-
In Alias Grace (1996), Margaret Atwood answers from a woman’s perspective: [Y]ou may think a bed is a peaceful thing, Sir, and to you it may mean rest and comfort and a good night’s sleep. But it isn’t so for…
-
originally posted here CHINA: WHAT IT IS, WHAT IT COULD BE . In an interview in 2008, I was asked whether my loyalty lay with “Hong Kong” or “China.” I remember finding the question easy to answer: “Hong Kong,…
-
Edinburgh, May 2011 ––ARIEL.All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I comeTo answer thy best pleasure; be’t to fly,To swim, to dive into the fire, to rideOn the curl’d clouds; to thy strong bidding taskAriel and all his quality. …..…
Cha 