You’d never have found Mallarmé in the back room at the Prince. He kept more elevated company. His poetry is equally elevated. As a Symbolist he played primarily with the ambiguity & musicality of words. Their ability to suggest dreamy or childlike or exotic moods. His ‘A Throw of the Dice’ played with space, emptiness, … More Stephane Mallarme
Remember the back room at The Prince ? Friday night . Saturday night . Pimps,hookers,dealers,regulars,wannabes.Baudelaire would have loved it . The torrid diversity . The high . The low . I can see him beside the jukebox scribbling in a note book . A poem,an essay, some art critisism. Something to prick the pretentions of … More Charles Baudelaire
Think grammar , punctuation , linear narrative , autobiography , the lyric , three act structures , resolution , mythologies , the unified & univocal self , an essential biological self , patriarchy , fixed gender roles , nationalism , capitalism , class , the canon , etc. are linguistic & material structures that seek … More Language Poetry
Grandmother of Language Poetry & patron to Picasso & Matisse , Gertrude Stein considered words primarily for their ‘weights’, textures & rhythms rather than any literal meaning . Like Matisse & colour , releasing it from any fidelity to nature . Or like Picasso , slicing,dicing & recombining forms in any manner he saw fit … More Gertrude Stein
The English Romantic poet Lord Byron was by one assessment mad , bad & dangerous to know . Rimbaud was all that & more . Ancestor to Surrealism . Seeker of enlightenment through derangement of the senses .Destabiliser of language & poetic form . An arsehole , frequently . By the age of 21 he’d … More Arthur Rimbaud
William Carlos Williams . For a man who conceived of the poem as a ‘small or large machine made of words’ , the poetry of William Carlos Williams can be remarkably tender . Sometimes disarmingly simple & direct , sometimes a dense collage of details , sometimes not much more than jottings on a note … More Blogger – Paul Harper: William Carlos Williams
Where to begin with Ezra ? As a poet he’s best remembered for ‘The Cantos’ , regarded by some as an unmitigated mess & by others as a masterwork of poetic technology , a sort of Modernist ‘how to’ . As an editor of magazines & books etc , he discovered the likes of William … More Blogger – Paul Harper: Ezra Pound
T.S Eliot was many things : poet , playwright , essayist , critic , merchant banker , Nobel Prize winner , publisher , editor , teacher . At his best he was a terrific poet with a knack for stark imagery & a ringing music . At his worst , such as The Four Quartets … More Blogger- Paul Harper: T. S. Eliot
Music Source: | Bricks and Clicks on WordPress.com
The following poem was written as a collaborative piece in class by the roomers group in 2011. Our insincere apologies to anyone who holds “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar sacred.. I love a sunburnt junkie A man of weeping veins Of jagged fountain angels who laugh at bloody pains I shoved him four horizons And glassed … More Blogger – Philippa Armstrong: I love a sunburnt junkie
