I took to reading Catherine Merridale, Lenin on the Train (2016) this morning while reclining on a scarlet chaise-longue and bathing in autumnal sunshine. The cat was on my lap, but my attention kept slipping…. [Read More]
Wallace Stevens is a poet of comedy, and comedy relieves the distress of tragic history. Comedy reconciles the restless, Romantic imagination with the present and the real. When the world falls apart, one must cultivate one’s garden, but also tell some comic stories over dinner. It is comedy, not alone but inseparable, that moves the infinite conversation on.
This morning I read some poems from Hafez (c 1315-1390) that celebrated love and wine and…
The story of Ezra Pound’s mind cannot be told in plain and simple affirmations. Three twisted…
2020 has taught us through bitter experience that our societies are not vaccinated against totalitarianism, and…
Over at my blog’s My reading archive page, I have updated my notes on my main…
Frank Furedi has proposed an intriguing idea that the spectre haunting radical identity politics, the Rainbow…
“Never have human groups of such a size been so rich, so old, so educated, so…
Sitting in a shopping centre cafe, I am reading A Year with Rumi. I am waiting…
Looking over my posts for the year I am struck by the recurrence of history in…