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Anne Hathaway Carol Ann Duffy ‘Item I gyve unto my wief my second best bed…’ (from Shakespeare’s will) The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, cliff-tops, seas where he would dive for pearls. My lover’s words were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses on these lips; my […]

Writing is not a sexy business. It’s not a rare butterfly that floats down and gently kisses you on the nose with a brilliant idea that conjures a hurricane of cash. It’s frustrating, and it’s lonely, and for most people, it doesn’t pay. But one genre consistently makes it work. Romance writers who are able […]

Catherine Caruso | Scientific American: Don’t Forget: You, Too, Can Acquire a Super Memory. Learning a memorization technique used by elite memory athletes leads to widespread changes in brain wiring. Amber Rae | Fast Company: How To Schedule Your Day For Peak Creative Performance. Elizabeth Winkler | The Atlantic: Was Shakespeare a Woman? The authorship […]

HENRY V, ACT 3, SCENE I. France. Before Harfleur. Alarum. Enter KING HENRY, EXETER, BEDFORD, GLOUCESTER, and Soldiers, with scaling-ladders KING HENRY V Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But […]

Twigs Taha Muhammad Ali Translated by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi, and Gabriel Levin Neither music, fame, nor wealth, not even poetry itself, could provide consolation for life’s brevity, or the fact that King Lear is a mere eighty pages long and comes to an end, and for the thought that one might suffer greatly on […]

I had the first couple of lines, with their curious, beautiful syntax, stuck in my head today. I struggled to recall where they were from. Shakespeare, obviously, but where? One of the plays with end-rhymed soliloquies? That narrows it, but contextually, they could fit in many places. Shakespeare is full of suitable matches. I had […]