In Poetry and Film: Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art
Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art —
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —
No — yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever — or else swoon to death.
Recently, we saw the Jane Campion movie, Bright Star, the story about the love affair between the English 19th c poet, John Keats, and the young Fanny Brawne. We can highly recommend the movie (and advise taking along a supply of tissues) as well as the Andrew Motion University of Chicago biography of Keats, which we quote in a paragraph below:
"Keats finished Bright Star knowing that one kind of steadfastness had gone, and another kind had yet to be confirmed. On 18 October, twelve days before his twenty-fourth birthday, he finally asked Mrs. Dilke to let Fanny know that he was returning to live with Brown. The following day, he told her himself, asking soon afterwards that their 'understanding' should now become a formal arrangement, and probably giving her a garnet ring. It was a momentous decision, but they did their best to keep it secret, and agreed that Fanny should not wear the ring in public. They had several reasons. Keats knew that he could not afford to get married in the foreseeable future. He also realised that Mrs. Brawne did not approve. She still liked Keats, but understood that his prospects were dismal, and hoped that the plan would 'go off' in due course. Moreover, he distrusted the reaction of his family and friends — rightly, as it turned out." Read More...Making the Revolution – in one County
Poetry: Off the Page [iTunes]
Off the Page, a review from the Scout Report, Computer Science Department, University of Wisconsin; Sponsored by University of Wisconsin - Madison Libraries.
Listening to poets is always enjoyable, and this collection of poetry readings is quite a pip. The site contains performances from the past five decades, and visitors can listen to dozens of British poets read a host of different works. On the homepage, visitors can browse through these offerings via the areas "Poet", "Date", and "Location". The earliest recordings here include the Scottish modernist Hugh MacDiarmid reading Moonstruck, Stony Limits, and The Eemis Stane. Other poets represented in this collection include Allen Fisher, Caroline Bergvall, Harriet Tarlo, and Attila the Stockbroker. The site also includes a set of links to other online audio collections, performance organizations, and online performance archives.
Read More...Herta Muller, Partial Text of Two Novels and Nobel Facts
Herta Müller, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed" joins the women who have won that particular prize previously:
Women Nobel Laureates in Literature
11 other women have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940) was the first woman to be awarded in 1909. Selma Lagerlöf was awarded five years before she was elected to the Swedish Academy, the Nobel Prize-Awarding Institution responsible for selecting Nobel Laureates in Literature.
1909 - Selma Lagerlöf
1926 - Grazia Deledda
1928 - Sigrid Undset
1938 - Pearl Buck
1945 - Gabriela Mistral
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1991 - Nadine Gordimer
1993 - Toni Morrison
1996 - Wislawa Szymborska
2004 - Elfriede Jelinek
2007 - Doris Lessing (Ms. Lessing was 88 years old when she was awarded the Prize in 2007.)
Read More...