PolyArchive

In Memory of W. B. Yeats W. H. Auden I He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, And snow disfigured the public statues; The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold […]

Epilogue Robert Lowell Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme— why are they no help to me now I want to make something imagined, not recalled? I hear the noise of my own voice: The painter’s vision is not a lens, it trembles to caress the light. But sometimes everything I write with the threadbare art […]

One moment of our 1993 conversation made this especially clear, one during which we both looked at the textured surface of Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952, a painting by Jackson Pollock full of patches, slashes, lines, drippings, and blobs, with barely a hint of blue. “I don’t understand this,” I said. “Yes you do,” Lynch […]

Italo Calvino’s Definition: What Makes a Book a “Classic”? The classics are the books of which we usually hear people say, “I am rereading…” and never “I am reading…” We use the words “classics” for books that are treasured by those who have read and loved them; but they are treasured no less by those […]

The Literary World Philip Larkin I ‘Finally, after five months of my life during which I could write nothing that would have satisfied me, and for which no power will compensate me…’ My dear Kafka, When you’ve had five years of it, not five months, Five years of an irresistible force meeting an immoveable object […]

Via the fabulous Oona, my sewing inspiration, I am obsessed with this song: I love his voice and modulation. The instrumentation. And it’s Baltimore! Just perfect. I think I have to buy this. [caesura] And because I can’t hear anyone mention today’s date without thinking of this song, here is my dear Aimee in an […]

I reached saturation point with lifestyle blogs, as I had previously with personal finance blogs, lifehack blogs, and probably more that have now slipped my mind entirely. It’s miserably hot here, by the way. I love Pinterest, but it depresses me how 80% of pins are re-pins, and only 20% is new content. Of that […]

Instructions Eavan Boland To write about age you need to take something and break it. (This is an art which has always loved young women. And silent ones.) A branch, perhaps, girlish with blossom. Snapped off. Close to the sap. Then cut through a promised summer. Continue. Cut down to the root. The spring afternoon […]

Memory Siegfried Sassoon (Limerick, 1 February 1918) When I was young my heart and head were light, And I was gay and feckless as a colt Out in the fields, with morning in the may, Wind on the grass, wings in the orchard bloom. O thrilling sweet, my joy, when life was free And all […]

Ode: Salute to the French Negro Poets Frank O’Hara From near the sea, like Whitman my great predecessor, I call to the spirits of other lands to make fecund my existence do not spare your wrath upon our shores, that trees may grow upon the sea, mirror of our total mankind in the weather one […]

О, весна без конца и без краю – Без конца и без краю мечта! Узнаю тебя, жизнь! Принимаю! И приветствую звоном щита! Принимаю тебя, неудача, И удача, тебе мой привет! В заколдованной области плача, В тайне смеха – позорного нет! Принимаю бессонные споры, Утро в завесах темных окна, Чтоб мои воспаленные взоры Раздражала, пьянила весна! […]

Everyone was talking about seeing the aurora borealis this past week. It was a reminder that this thing I love and obsess about is something many other people love and obsess about as well. I saw the northern lights when I was 6 years old, and I have never recovered. I will never rest until […]

WHEN I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, ‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free.’ But I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me. When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, ‘The heart out of the […]

A few days ago, I finally finished Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. The fact that it took me so long to read a book about typewriters, the internet, psychology, and other things I love probably proves Carr’s point better than anything I can write here. So here are […]

Wisława Szymborska died yesterday. She was 88. I love Poland for celebrating its poets, finding cultural heroes not only in the past but also the present day cities and villages (and shipyards). Though in Szymborska’s case, perhaps it was the worst thing to happen to her, worsening her agoraphobia. The Nobel she won silenced her […]